Alaa al-Aswany, Egyptian author and activist, is being sued by the Egyptian military for insulting President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi
Alaa al-Aswany, author of The Yacoubian Building and critic of the political regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, will face a lawsuit filed by the military authority of Egypt. According to reporting… Read more »
Egyptian author jailed over “explicit” content in his novel
Over the past few years, MobyLives has been reporting on increased government censorship and harassment of writers in Egypt. Now, the situation appears to be worsening, with alarming incidents following each… Read more »
The booksellers of the Arab world
The single-minded devotion of booksellers and bookbuyers can at times be astounding—take, for example, Colin Franklin, who in his recent memoir about antiquarian bookselling, Obsessions and Confessions of a Book Life, recounts… Read more »
The Institute of Egypt in Cairo gets some of its books back
One casualty of the Arab Spring, the Institute of Egypt in Cairo, which caught fire last December during the protests in Tahrir Square, and which, Egyptian news sources report, the… Read more »
Erotica and the state of publishing in Yemen
It’s not just Fifty Shades of Grey: it seems that erotic literature is having a moment in Yemen, too. The Yemen Observer reports that street-side booksellers in Tahrir Square are… Read more »