Pyramid texts / Gamal al-Ghitani ; translated by Humphrey Davies.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ghīṭānī, Jamāl.

Contributor:

Davies, Humphrey T. (Humphrey Taman), translator.

Series:

Modern Arabic literature

Modern Arabic Literature

Standardized Title:

Mutūn al-Ahrām. English

Language:

Arabic

English

Subjects (All):

Ghīṭānī, Jamāl--Translations into English.

Ghīṭānī, Jamāl.

Pyramids--Egypt--Fiction.

Pyramids.

Egypt--Fiction.

Egypt.

Genre:

Fiction.

Novels.

Physical Description:

131 pages ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cairo ; New York : American University in Cairo Press, [2007]

Summary:

With its Sufistic parables of the human condition, rendered in a style redolent of both the austere meditations of Borges and the dark engorged ruminations of Arthur C. Clark, Pyramid Texts engages the mind and beguiles the imagination. In a series of chapters each shorter than the last so that, like their subjects, they taper ultimately into nothingness the author evokes the obsessions that have drawn men over the centuries to the brooding presence of mankind's most ancient and mysterious monuments. Among others in a procession of exotic characters, a Moroccan seeker after knowledge spends years contemplating the pyramids in the hope that one day he will understand the mysterious writing that fitfully appears on their sides. Another waits patiently for the moment when the shadow of one will diverge from its accustomed path and bestow immortality, and the Sphinx performs a celestial dance. Pyramid Texts leads us into a world of endless passages and mysterious sighing winds, a world whose claustrophobic and shadowy spaces may be illuminated by flashes of ecstasy leading to scintillating transfigurations and dizzying annihilations.

Notes:

"First published in Arabic in 1994 as Mutum al-ahram"--T.p. verso.

ISBN:

9774160517

9789774160516

OCLC:

123352011