Books Popular in Cairo
posted by on December 18 at 16:29 PM
The article is terrible, but its opening is funny:
As of last April, the late Edward Said’s “Orientalism,” originally published in 1978, was no. 2 on the best-seller list in Cairo. No. 1was a book arguing that Saddam Hussein hadn’t really been executed…
Ibn Warraq is brilliant. Why I Am Not A Muslim is a better apologia for atheism than Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens put together. Everything that is wrong with Arab intellectualism and right with Western intellectualism is right there in the fact that he is one of ours, not one of theirs.
Is Mein Kampf still on the Egyptian bestseller list?
Actually, he's really at this very green ranch in Texas, cutting brush ...
Oh, you thought the Secret Service was there for GWB?
Thanks for the link. Great article!
WHY is this article terrible, charles?
Damn. My script of "They Cloned Saddam's Brain" just bit the dust.
@4, i greatly disagree with its reading of Said's masterpiece and its impact on cultural studies.
The article is ham-fisted and unconvincing because it lacks any nuanced criticism of Warraq, who deserves careful critical appraisal. To blame Said and postcolonial studies for "medievalism and intellectual poverty throughout the Middle East" is absurd.
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