“It all began in jail, says Mohammed El Sharqawi. “The government had put a lot of bloggers in jail and so we talked together about starting a publishing house to spread our work.
“It was supposed to be a kind of collective, but I ended up being the only one who followed through.
Scheduled to launch on July 7, Malameh publishing house and its passionate founders aim at nothing less than to shake the foundations of Egyptian literary culture – or to recreate them.
Their primary financial backing comes from Hani Anan, a wealthy businessman who has financed other social projects.
While Malameh is not operating yet, Partner Nayira El Sheikh is confident that they are not merely spitting in the wind. She believes it represents the vanguard of a greater movement.
“It started with the blogging, all of us are bloggers. The free exchange of ideas and thoughts online has created this huge community with fresh ideas and fresh language who are unafraid to break with tradition, rules and norms. We are a big and growing community and the time is right for this project.
El Sheikh outlined the publishing house’s goals, eyes gleaming with passion. “We don’t want to make money, she laughed. “Well of course, we’d like to make money, but that’s not really our main goal.
“We want to create a reading culture in Egypt and to produce new Egyptian novels to support that, novels new in both form and content. We have young and unknown writers who are taking a big risk by publishing through us.
Their goal, she says, is to target non-readers, that is, people who do not read as a hobby, and also the youth.
This appears to be most of Egypt. As El Sheikh explained, “Egypt just does not have a reading culture. People do not read for fun, as a hobby, or often even at all. Parents don’t read stories to their children, schools don’t teach children to love reading, it isn’t there.
“We feel that a big part of the reason is that the books that people want to read aren’t there. The literary language, fusha [classical Arabic], is so far from the language of everyday life that people don’t feel connected to the books out there. Moroccan writer Brahim El Mansouri echoed her analysis. “Parents and peers don’t respect reading and people who read. They don’t believe in it, they even make fun of people who love to read.
“But I don’t think that fusha is the problem. Even in English, people do write differently to how they speak.
“Regardless of language, literature right now is definitely declining in quality and prestige in Egypt.
Amr Qinawi, owner of Sindbad Books in Downtown, said that he too felt that literature in Egypt was “moving backwards, not forwards.
El Sheikh clarified further. “First by new content, we mean topics that aren’t written about now. Not necessarily controversial things, but it will include those.
“One of our first books is called ‘Ostrich Egg’ by Raouf Mosaad and it is an erotic novel. Not very graphic like the West of course, this is an Egyptian erotic novel. Rather there is sexual content and the novel uses sexual themes to explore political and social ideas. It was published once before, and it sold out, but it was not republished due to strong opposition from Al-Azhar.
El Sharqawi added. “Now it is possible for us to write about these things because there is more freedom of expression and publishing in Egypt. About 15 years ago they might have just banned books like this, maybe even thrown you in jail. Now it’s not perfect, but it’s better.
El Sharqawi was a prominent dissident and coming from him, this is a significant observation.
El Sheikh said, “In addition to content, we will also have new styles of writing, incorporating more everyday language and moving away from pure fusha.
“As we said before, it’s important to note that this isn’t just political and controversial stuff, we want to publish children’s books too. It’s about creating a whole culture to represent Egyptian culture, good and bad, not just about creating controversy.
El Mansouri reluctantly agreed with this approach, indicating his support for new, genre-pushing literature “as long as it was about more than just controversy, and showed respect for the reader.
El Sheikh continued the publishing house’s manifesto. “Even in distribution we want to change things. Right now books are only distributed in Cairo. The provinces get nothing. Like in Aswan sometimes there are only about 10 copies of a book available. Sometimes people literally sell the same copies over and over again to each other. Every year people from all over Egypt come to the Cairo Book Fair looking for books because they can’t get them [where they live].
“We are going to distribute fixed quotas of books to the provinces through our own distribution channels. This way people outside Cairo can get the books they need, he added.
Qinawi strongly disagreed with El Sheikh’s picture of a book-starved Egypt. “The people in the provinces are too poor and too illiterate and too uncultured to sell books to. If you send them an edition, you’ll sell maybe two or three copies only. That’s why there are no books there.
El Mansouri also pointed out that most people who come to the Cairo Book Fair are professionals and people in search of technical or educational books, not novels. “But maybe 15 percent are actually curious students, he commented.
However, Qinawi still indicated he felt that there is definitely space for such an edgy publishing house, “but only if it executed well. It is definitely financially feasible.
For all the grand scope of Malameh’s dreams, the numbers involved remain miniscule. Only 1,000 copies per book will be printed for all of Egypt’s 76 million people.
And Egypt’s trifling literary culture can barely support even this. Qinawi says his best-selling books only sell 2,000 copies.
Despite the seemingly massive hurdles in their path, Sharqawi and his partners have an even more ambitious end goal.
“Our dream is to one day export books to the rest of the world for them to read and for Egyptian culture to take its rightful place beside all other great world cultures.
