CAIRO: Earlier this week, the American University in Cairo Press announced, at a ceremony marking the 94th birthday of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, the award of the 2005 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature to Egyptian writer Yusuf Abu Rayya for his novel Laylat ‘urs (Wedding Night). The members of the Award Committee decided the award unanimously.
Samira Mehrez, a member of the Award Committee, summarized the quintessence of the novel’s storyline: “Laylat ‘urs is set in a small town in the Nile Delta during the post-1967 period that signals dramatic change in the town’s economic, social and power structures.The omniscient narrator who controls the sarcastic mode and tone of the text accompanies the reader,like a camera eye,to every public and private corner in the life of this small town . The central character in this tale of black humor is Houda the Mute, the butcher’s apprentice whose voicelessness is compensated for by two allseeing eyes that pierce the most intimate and secret details of the lives of the town dwellers.He reveals the town’s private stories through public sign language thus articulating the unspoken and the forbidden.
“This is a brilliant novel about a rural town midway between the village and the big city that can encapsulate as a whole. It is a sea of stories into which streams of international and Arab texts flow . Sarcasm, irony, and light comedy dominate the narrative tone; they become a means to protest dominant values in an oppressive society, added Ibrahim Fathy, another of the committee members.
In his own address to the ceremony, Abu Rayya explains his desire to write about rural Egypt, to “preserve them, pure and intuitive, with an untainted imagery. I will carry their rituals, their myths their heroes and their villains, their small dreams, their conspiracies, their lords and their paupers. I will envelope their secrets, their unknown worlds.
Abu Rayya also goes on to pay tribute to the laureate he was awarded in honor of, “The creative threads of the younger generation [of writers] will forever be braided with Mahfouz’s long history in order to weave a common dream. Abu Rayya was born in Hihya in the Nile Delta in 1955 and received his degree in journalism and mass communication from Cairo University in 1977. He is currently the senior specialist at the National Research Center in Cairo, and has been on the governing board of the Egyptian branch of PEN International since 1995.
His first collection of short stories, Al-Duha Al-‘ali (High Forenoon), was published in 1985, and since then he has written five further short story collections. His first novel, ‘Atash al-sabbar (Cactus Thirst) was published in 1989, followed by Tall-al-hawa (Passion Hill) in 1999, Al-Gazira Al-bayda’ (The White Island) in 2000, Laylat ‘urs (Wedding Night) in 2002, and ‘Ashiqal-hayy (The Lover) in 2005. He has also authored several books for children, most recently Maghamarat Marco Polo (The Adventures of Marco Polo), which appeared in 2005.
The English translation of the novel Laylat ‘urs (Wedding Night) is scheduled to be published in 2006 by AUC Press, simultaneously in Cairo, New York and London. Agencies
