Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor’s Foreword
- Note on Transliteration and Translation
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Dramaturgies of Conspiracy: Bakathir, Idris and the July Regime
- 2 Naguib Surur: The Poetics and Politics of Niyāka
- 3 Sonallah Ibrahim’s al-Lajna: Between Critical Theory and Conspiracy Theory
- 4 Gamal al-Ghitani’s Ḥikāyāt al-Khabīʾa: The Fitna of Sexual Deviance
- 5 Paranoia in the Second Degree: Three Recent Novels
- Epilogue
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor’s Foreword
- Note on Transliteration and Translation
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Dramaturgies of Conspiracy: Bakathir, Idris and the July Regime
- 2 Naguib Surur: The Poetics and Politics of Niyāka
- 3 Sonallah Ibrahim’s al-Lajna: Between Critical Theory and Conspiracy Theory
- 4 Gamal al-Ghitani’s Ḥikāyāt al-Khabīʾa: The Fitna of Sexual Deviance
- 5 Paranoia in the Second Degree: Three Recent Novels
- Epilogue
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
It is a strange coincidence, to say the least, that three versions of this book have fallen into my hands in the last few years. Each version pertains to a different edition, and each I obtained without requesting from the bookstores that are known to carry it.
The first version was lent to me by a gentleman from among our military leaders – those who pursue rare books about war, strategies for invasion and conquest, and suchlike. I returned it to him after reading it and copying down miscellaneous chapters.
The second version, redacted and abridged, I purchased from a bookseller who knew neither its title nor what it was about. This version, along with the portions I had copied from it, disappeared along with other papers and books that I accused my household servants of stealing.
The third version, which pertains to the fourth English edition, I found among the belongings of a great physician. Inside was written the date May 1, 1921 and the French word for ‘gift’ – Souveni [sic]. In view of the odd fates met by these various versions, I was nearly convinced this book was destined to be lost.
The Egyptian littérateur ʿAbbās Maḥmūd al-ʿAqqād (1889–1964) relates this anecdote in his foreword to al-Khaṭar al-Yahūdī: Ḥrūtūkūlāt Ṣukamāʾ Iihyūn (1961 [1951]), the first ‘faithful and complete’ Arabic translation of The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion. The 1903 Russian ‘original’ of this text – in fact, a forgery patched together from a fictional French political satire and a German novel – had already been translated into most languages of Europe, where its violent anti-semitism had great appeal among ideologues and extremists of varying political persuasions. Its Arabic translation would reach a similar readership. Not only in Egypt, but around the world, The Protocols continues to evoke associations with the groups summoned in the passage above: military men obsessed with unconventional warfare; second-hand booksellers on city sidewalks; servants or subalterns suspected of purloining letters; otherwise respectable professionals with a secret passion for the esoteric and the occult; the peripheries, the backrooms, and the dark spaces of the social imaginary. What, then, was it doing on the desk of ʿAbbās al-ʿAqqād?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Conspiracy in Modern Egyptian Literature , pp. 1 - 25Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2018