All the Roads Are Open: An Afghan Journey (1939–40) by Annemarie Schwarzenbach | Book Review
“The beginning of a great journey has become a gentle, untroubled memory, like a dream you need not fear and do not lose.” All the Roads Are Open: An Afghan Journey (1939–40) by Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942) is an account of a trip that Schwarzenbach undertook with a fellow traveller and journalist […]
Athens Diaries | Life Steeped in Books, Rest, Sunsets, and Gentle Sounds of Cobblestone Streets
In June I spent a few days in Athens and on the island of Hydra. Below you can see a few recordings I took during my first days in Athens. ARRIVAL My day of arrival in Athens welcomed me with an extremely hot weather. I used public transport to get […]
M Train by Patti Smith | Book Review
“This is how I live, I am thinking.” “I walked east to St. Mark’s Bookshop, where I roamed the aisles, randomly selecting, feeling papers, and examining fonts, praying for a perfect opening line. (…).” Written in poetic, luminous, melancholic and fragmentary prose M Train by Patti Smith is an introspective […]
7 Dystopian Book Recommendations Like I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jaqueline Harpman is one of my beloved books I have ever read. You can find my full review here. I prepared a list of seven books that you might also enjoy if you love I Who Have Never….Most books listed below share similar […]
Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico | Book Review
Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico (translated by Sophie Hughes) captures the soul of the modern globalised and culturally homogenised society shaped by the constant flow of online images available on the internet which promises the purposeful and uncomplicated life. The reality however does not always live up to these pictures. The […]
London Diaries | The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, City Walks and Cinema
I recorded a few snapshots of my London life during the month of March. In the video you will see Gordon Square and Reading Room at Welcome Collection in Bloomsbury where I often have my lunch breaks, my afternoon and evening walks in Soho, Trafalgar Square and Russell Square. My […]
The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick | Book Review
“(…) nothing healed me of a sore and angry heart like a walk through the city. To see in the street the fifty different ways people struggle to remain human – the variety and inventiveness of survival techniques – was to feel the pressure relieved, the overflow draining off.” The […]
Berlin Melancholy | Walking in the City of Solitude
“Berlin is a city condemned forever to becoming and never to being.” Karl Scheffler, 1910 At the end of February I spent a few days in Berlin. On my first day I wandered the streets of Berlin, saw the Brandenburg Gate by day and night, visited Friedrich Strasse, Holocaust Memorial, […]
8 Books by Egyptian Writers Everyone Should Read
I have prepared a short list of books by Egyptian authors exploring the texture of the Egyptian society throughout various eras of the 20th century and early 21st century which I hope you will find useful and interesting. 1 Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi Woman at Point […]
Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal | Book Review
Traces of Enayat by the Egyptian writer Iman Mersal was published in 2019 and tells a story of another Egyptian female writer, Enayat Al-Zayyat who committed suicide at the age of 26 in 1963. She only wrote one book called Love and Silence which initially rejected for publication but later […]