It’s Halloween weekend, and Diwan is celebrating spookiness! Wear a costume of your favorite character, come into your nearest Diwan branch and receive a free book.
This fun event is available at all Diwan branches!
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Meet the author and get a signed copy
في ديوان مصر الجديدة وفي بث مباشر على صفحة ديوان على الفيس بوك
١١/١١/٢٠٢٠ الساعة ٧ مساء
This year marks the sixth New Hermopolis Thoth’s Festival and for the first time it is proudly hosted in collaboration with Diwan Bookstore to usher a new turning in the evolution of this festival which began at New Hermopolis in Oct. 2015 as a revival of an ancient Egyptian festival that celebrated the power of the ‘Creative Word’, the very essence of ancient Hermopolis and its guardian’ Thoth’ who conveyed to humanity all art and knowledge.
In this event we will report on the proceedings of the past ‘Five Festivals’ that took place at New Hermopolis acknowledging the generous contributions that were made by various cultural partners who over the years made such festival possible.
It was in our vision from the start that the ‘Thoth’s Festival’ should one day become an international cultural/literary modeled on the famous ‘Hay on Wye Festival, UK’ where creative minds from different walks of life can come together to think about the world in creative ways and answer some of the increasingly urgent problems we face today.
We hope that the collaboration between Diwan Book Stores and New Hermopolis will highlight the significance of such festival that celebrated the value of the ‘book’ and the ‘writer’ behind it. This would be the necessary step that would finally lead to the establishment of ‘The First Hay on Wye Festival in Egypt to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the death of Taha Hussain on 2023. It is hoped that this would also be accompanied by the inauguration of ‘The Egyptian Writing Museum’ to be housed at Taha Hussain’s Rest House that lies within the antiquities of Tuna El-Gebel (Hermopolis West).
(2020) Expect vibrant, vivid and eye-opening descriptions of Middle Eastern life propelled by a tender storyline, all in Shafak’s haunting, beautiful and considered prose’ Vanity Fair
‘Incredibly sensuous and poetic and evocative’ Pandora Sykes, The High Low
‘Richly uplifting… truly beautiful writing’ Nicola Sturgeon
‘In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila’s consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore…’
For Leila, each minute after her death recalls a sensuous memory: spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the birth of a yearned-for son; bubbling vats of lemon and sugar to wax women’s legs while men are at prayer; the cardamom coffee she shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each fading memory brings back the friends she made in her bittersweet life – friends who are now desperately trying to find her . . .
‘Simply magnificent, a truly captivating work of immense power and beauty, on the essence of life and its end’ Philippe Sands
‘A vivid carnival of life and death, cruelty and kindness, love, politics and deep humanity. Brilliant!’ Helena Kennedy
‘Elif Shafak brings into the written realm what so many others want to leave outside. Spend more than ten minutes and 38 seconds in this world of the estranged. Shafak makes a new home for us in words’ Colum McCann
‘Elif Shafak’s extraordinary 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World is a work of brutal beauty and consummate tenderness’ Simon Schama
‘A rich, sensual novel… This is a novel that gives voice to the invisible, the untouchable, the abused and the damaged, weaving their painful songs into a thing of beauty.’ Financial Times
‘One of the best writers in the world today’ Hanif Kureishi
‘Haunting, moving, beautifully written – and based by an extraordinary cast of characters who capture the diversity of modern Turkey. A masterpiece’ Peter Frankopan
‘Extraordinary’ Guardian
‘Life-affirming’ Stylist
في «الكاتبات والوحدة» تتحدث نورا ناجي عن عشر كاتبات، عشن حياة قاسية، إذ لم يمنحهن المجتمع فرصة للتنفس والانطلاق، وحاصرهن بكثير من الخطوط الحادة. وكي تصل إلى أعماق كل كاتبة، كان عليها أن تزيل الطبقة تلو الطبقة، وتصحح صورًا مغلوطة عن بطلات هذا الكتاب، إذ نظر كثيرون إليهن باعتبارهن فاقدات الإرادة، لم يستطعن تجاوز الصدمات، واستسلمن لمصائرهن، مع أنهن كنا ضحايا لواقع شديد القسوة.
في هذا الكتاب نتلمّس مزيج الصخب والجنون والعزلة، بينما نطّلع على المصائر الصعبة، فمثلاً يصل عنفوان الأمريكية فاليري سولاناس إلى حد إطلاق الرصاص على شخص حاول دفن موهبتها، وتحاول أروى صالح المقاومة واستكمال الحياة، وتنمّي رضوى عاشور مهارتها الفائقة في التنـكر حتى تصـبح أخف في مجتمع لا يعرف سوى الانكسارات.
هذه الرواية تجربة جديدة في الكتابة حول العالم الخفي للريف المصري، ومحاولة اختراق القشرة البدائية التي تحيط به والتي تراكمت على مدى آلاف السنين، من خلال قصة طبيب أرياف شاب يتعرض لتجربة قاسية في بداية حياته فيبدأ رحلة جديدة إلى قرية منعزلة بالصعيد.
يعاني هناك من الوحدة قبل أن يجد نفسه متغلغلاً في تفاصيل الحياة اليومية للقرية الصغيرة الراقدة على حافة الصحراء. يقع في غرام الممرضة لكن تكون هناك مفاجأة في انتظاره.
“طبيب أرياف” تجربة طبيب يكتشف أن القوانين البدائية ما زالت هي السائدة، وأن هناك سلطة مطلقة تعتمد عليها وتستمد قوتها من جذور بعيدة. هي رواية عن الحب والرغبة واليأس، عن قرية تختزل العالم، يتصارع فيها البشر والغجر والقوى الحاكمة، وتمتلئ ذاكرتها الخفية بطبقات الزمن المصري المتراكم.
(2019) Straddling the two lands of Upper and Lower Egypt, Hermopolis—the City of Hermes—marks the ancient and future capital of Middle Egypt. In this book, Dr. Nasser presents a much-needed introduction to the history and territory of Hermopolis, as well as the values that emanated from this cosmic city to shape our thinking throughout the ages. In particular, Nasser traces the Hermetic concepts of humanism, idealism, utopianism, and fraternity, and argues that these ideals inspire our dreams for a better world.
Presented as a philosophy of hope, the influence of Hermeticism runs like a river through Egyptian, Hellenic, Su?, Renaissance, and Romantic territories, before branching into the delta of twentieth century philosophical and psychological thought. Drawing on her experience as a practicing psychiatrist, Nasser shows how the existential pioneers of the last century not only acknowledged their debt to their Hermetic past, but also spoke to the emergence of a new Self capable of exploring and integrating its multiplicities.
The principle of eternal renewal based on deep historical foundations also guides the author’s own project of creating the New Hermopolis in Egypt today. While the intangible heritage of Hermopolis transcends its local territory, its legacy cannot be revived if its foundations are not studied, explored, and developed. In the ?nal chapter of this book, Nasser describes her own path of physically reviving this centre in the spirit of its past while simultaneously forging it in the vision of an integral future. Like the lotus that bears the newborn sun, New Hermopolis emerges as a cultural, ecological, and intellectual centre with the potential to breathe new life into its land and the wider world.
(2020) As President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves. The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy-and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them. He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton’s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. “The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal-about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place. Bolton’s account starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria’s chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, “If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk-all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work-and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.” The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there-from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.