Books and publications
Index / Activities / Books and publications / Bicycles Are Not for Cairo
Bicycles Are Not for Cairo
From January 15, 2013 until January 28, 2013
The book Las bicicletas no son para El Cairo (Bicycles Are Not for Cairo), the latest work by Emilio González Ferrín, will be presented in Madrid on January 28. This event organized by Casa Árabe and Ediciones en Huida will be attended by the Director of the Department of Arab Studies from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Juan Martos Quesada, Casa Árabe’s Coordinator of Culture and New Media, Nuria Medina.
The presentation will be held at 7:00 p.m. in the Auditorium of Casa Árabe’s headquarters in Madrid (c/ Alcalá, 62). Free entry until the Auditorium capacity is full.
On the one hand, there is Cairo, that timeless city which will live on after we are all gone –eternity, divine treasure–. On the other, there is a set of characters (Fabian Goriot, Naçira Saïd, Nay Mostafa, Amina al-Iskandereya) who play a part in this seven-chapter Egyptian melodrama. Shortly before one million people rose up in Tahrir Square, these men and women’s destinies became interwoven amid the difficulty they have riding their bicycles through the city’s “Cairotic” traffic and the impossible time they have trying to speed up the pace of their lives. Despite pointless rushing and falling bicycles, the main characters of the book attempt to breathe, trapped like flies in the thick honey of Egyptian time... to end up weaving together lives which rescue them from themselves. It is a universal story masterfully contextualized and localized by the author on two levels: the first, spectacular and descriptive, shows us Cairo as a city, and the second introduces Egypt as a society undergoing upheaval which unconsciously realizes and comes to terms with the fact that nothing will ever be the same now that the Arab Spring has broken out.
A scholar of Arab and Islamic studies, he combines his university classes with essay authorship, for which he has earned awards including the international Jovellanos Essay Prize. Bicycles Are Not for Cairo is his personal homage to the city where he lived and has been returning for the past two decades. The novel forms part of the Cairo Trilogy included within the saga about Sebastian Gardet, an elusive character through whom the author offers us an unusual European-Arab dialogue.
Synopsis
On the one hand, there is Cairo, that timeless city which will live on after we are all gone –eternity, divine treasure–. On the other, there is a set of characters (Fabian Goriot, Naçira Saïd, Nay Mostafa, Amina al-Iskandereya) who play a part in this seven-chapter Egyptian melodrama. Shortly before one million people rose up in Tahrir Square, these men and women’s destinies became interwoven amid the difficulty they have riding their bicycles through the city’s “Cairotic” traffic and the impossible time they have trying to speed up the pace of their lives. Despite pointless rushing and falling bicycles, the main characters of the book attempt to breathe, trapped like flies in the thick honey of Egyptian time... to end up weaving together lives which rescue them from themselves. It is a universal story masterfully contextualized and localized by the author on two levels: the first, spectacular and descriptive, shows us Cairo as a city, and the second introduces Egypt as a society undergoing upheaval which unconsciously realizes and comes to terms with the fact that nothing will ever be the same now that the Arab Spring has broken out.
Emilio González Ferrín (Ciudad Real, 1965)
A scholar of Arab and Islamic studies, he combines his university classes with essay authorship, for which he has earned awards including the international Jovellanos Essay Prize. Bicycles Are Not for Cairo is his personal homage to the city where he lived and has been returning for the past two decades. The novel forms part of the Cairo Trilogy included within the saga about Sebastian Gardet, an elusive character through whom the author offers us an unusual European-Arab dialogue.
