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Author Ḥusayn, Ṭāhā, 1889-1973.

Title A man of letters / Taha Hussein ; translated by Mona El-Zayyat
Published [Cairo] : American University in Cairo Press, 2014

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Description 1 online resource (143 pages)
Summary Taha Hussein (1889-1973), blind from early childhood, rose from humble beginnings to pursue a distinguished career in Egyptian public life (he was at one time Minister of Education). But he was most influential through his voluminous, varied, and controversial writings. He became known by the unofficial title ''Dean of Arabic Letters,'' and the distinguished Egyptian critic Louis Awad described him as ""the greatest single intellectual and cultural influence on the literature of his period."" Based on the true story of a friend of the author, this novel -- unfolding between Cairo and Paris and through vivid personal correspondence --draws a picture of a powerful friendship and of a young man's dilemma: the man of letters of the title finds himself split between and in love with two cultures essentially incompatible, East and West. In his desperate struggle to reconcile them his soul is estranged and he is thrown?or escapes?deeper into the backstreet abyss of First World War Paris. In the end it is perhaps the very impracticality of his own morality that destroys him
Subject East and West -- Fiction
World War, 1914-1918 -- France -- Paris -- Fiction
Arabic fiction -- Translations into English
FICTION -- General.
FICTION -- Literary.
Arabic fiction
East and West
France -- Paris
Genre/Form Fiction
Translations
Form Electronic book
Author El-Zayyat, Mona
ISBN 9781617975288
1617975281
9781617974724
1617974722
Other Titles Adīb. English