For the Bookshelf: New Works by Adham Center Staffers

The AUC Press Fall 2003 catalog announces the imminent publication of two books by Adham staff.

Thebes at War, translated by Adham Center publications manager Humphrey Davies, is one of the last of Nobel literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz' novels to reach English readers. The book tells how Ahmose, founder of the 18th Dynasty, leads his people to victory against the Hyksos, barbarians who have occupied northern Egypt for two hundred years. However, according to the catalog, this is "not just a tale of ancient, clashing armies." Mahfouz's depiction of the Egyptian people's refusal to bow to outside domination held a special resonance for the country in 1930s, when the nationalist movement against the British and criticism of the originally Turkish monarchy were rising to their climax. Mahfouz' two companion novels-Khufu's Wisdom, translated by Raymond Stock, and Rhadopis of Nubia, translated by Anthony Calderbank-will appear alongside Thebes at War in Egypt on December 11, 2003 and in the United States early in 2004.

Davies has previously published translations of Arabic short stories in London and is currently working on Ala' al-Aswani's recent novel The Yacoubian Building for AUC Press.

Shems Friendlander's writings, photographs, and films about the great poet and mystic Mevlana Jalalu'ddin Rumi, founder of the Mevlevi Sufi order, are well known (see AdhamOnline Winter 2002: Shems Friedlander's Work on Rumi Continues). Rumi and the Whirling Dervishes, a new and revised edition of this Sufi classic, which features Friedlander's "haunting, evocative pictures of the order's dancers" taken within Mevlevi tekkes, or lodges, contains additional text and photographs and is now available.

Friedlander is chairman of the Sony Gallery International Advisory Board, creative director of Transnational Broadcasting Studies journal, senior lecturer at AUC's Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, and director of AUC's Apple Center for Graphic Communications.

The Editors