The City of Pleasure

The City of Pleasure Arabic: مدينة اللذة‎ is Ezzat el Kamhawi's first novel, and second book after It Happened in the land of Dust and Mud (stories). It was first released by the General Organization for Cultural Centers in 1997, second edition by el-Ain publishing in 2009. In his novel, Kamhawi attempted to personify an entire city where he deals with issues related to love and sex. The characters are portrayed as simple passerby who narrate the city's story and who live in it, with it and for it.[1]

The City of Pleasure
AuthorEzzat el Kamhawi
CountryEgypt
LanguageArabic
PublisherFirst Edition:
the General Organization for Cultural Centers 1997
Second Edition:
Elain Publishing House 2009
Preceded byIt Happened in the land of Dust and Mud 
Followed byTimes for Joy 

Plot

A city like no other, guarded by the goddess of pleasure and, ruled by a licentious king who dedicated his time to carnal pleasures and a princess who dreams of love and tender empathy. The priests decide to design the walls of the princess's room with figures of embracing lovers and burnt incense and chanted their magical incantations that the pictures on the wall may come to life and the dream of the princess for true love might come true.

People real and shadowy, strong slaves and emperors have met their doom at the gates of the City of Pleasure. Eventually the gates of the impenetrable city succumbs under the charm of two ingenious commodities: fried potatoes and pepsi-cola. No one knows the real history of the City of Pleasure and no welcome visitor has ever escaped its enchantment.

This is the novel that has been structured from human myths melted down and recreated one of the most perfectly executed literary whims. It is no longer possible to speak of modern Arabic literary narrative without including The City of Pleasure and the enriching addition it has provided to the art of the modern Arabic novel par excellence.

Quotes

Gamal El-Ghitani:

A novel belonging to a new writing and a newer vision, where tradition is mixed with contemporary life, this novel represents a strong distinct voice, accompanied by other voices in the literary scene now establishing new insights that can accommodate the concerns of man and reality to express them in different ways.[2]

Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi:

Fast and light as a snake, which is terrifying yet afraid, el-Kmahawi borrows the city's language, to face it with its legends stripping its cover that doesn't cover any defects.[2]

Mohamed Abd al-Muttalib:

A novel with a free horizon that doesn't recognize time-constraints or place limits.[2]

Nabil Soliman:

It is the city of wonders where facts seems as shadows of other facts.[2]

gollark: I used to have a cactus.
gollark: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/driver-api/serial/tty.html
gollark: IWD does not show Ad-Hoc networks in its scan results and does not support scanning while connected in Ad-Hoc mode. Thus connecting to an existing Ad-Hoc network is done in the same way as setting up a new one and requires an NM Connection object to be first set up. With nm-applet this is done using the Create New Wi-Fi Network… dialog and either selecting and existing Connection or selecting New….
gollark: I think this predates your nickname.
gollark: H.266 might be neat eventually if they don't bee the licensing into apioapiaryapispace.

References
  1. Al-Samary, Wael (16 April 2009). "مدينة اللذة.. ومتاهة الحب". Youm7. Retrieved 14 July 2014.
  2. "دار العين تدخل "مدينة اللذة" لعزت القمحاوي ." Elain Publishing. 11 January 2009. Retrieved 14 July 2014.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.