Will the Real Youssef Ziedan Please Come Forward?
Over at Al Masry Al Youm, Omar Cheta has an interesting piece about the perceptions and misperceptions of academic and author (and “Arabic Booker” winner) Youssef Ziedan. And this isn’t entirely the public’s fault, Cheta argues. Ziedan has not worked hard enough to make his views on religion clear: in plain, un-adorned, un-academic language. Ziedan’s Arabic Booker-winning Azazel (to be published in English by Atlantic Books in the summer of 2011) has been both popular and controversial: The Coptic Church decried it as defaming Christianity, and, Cheta says, many Muslims quietly cheered, thinking the historical novel “proved” the superiority of their religion. The professor and author followed Azazel with the nonfiction Arab Theology, which has been a bestseller across Cairo. According to Cheta, this tome argues that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are strands of the same tradition, and cannot be pulled apart, but must be assessed together. The book, he says, argues that talking about
