Despatches
News and events from around our network
Egypt’s Literary Scene
Many of the country’s hot writers have been translated into English
BEING ABBAS EL ABD
AHMED ALAIDY
A cult novel based in Cairo’s shopping malls described as a “Chuck Palahniuk-inspired rollercoaster ride through the insanity of Cairo.” Ahmed Alaidy, a 36-year-old former scriptwriter is a great chronicler of the reality of day-to-day life in Egypt. www.arabiabooks.co.uk
MEMORIES OF A MELTDOWN
MOHAMED MAKHZANGI
This Egyptian author found himself working as a doctor in Ukraine as the tragedy in Chernobyl unfolded. Written 20 years on, these are his recollections of that period. www.aucpress.com
MARYAM’S MAZE
MANSOURA EZ ELDIN
This book is about a young girl’s struggle to distinguish between dreams and reality, by a 34-year-old author whose latest novel, Beyond Paradise, was shortlisted for this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction. www.aucpress.com
A DOG WITH NO TAIL
HAMDI ABU GOLAYYEL
A novel about an aimless narrator still hoping for literary greatness. With a focus on personal alienation, 42-year-old Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s work is considered the most representative of the new wave of modern Cairo literature. www.aucpress.com
[FREETOWN]
SHOWING FAITH IN THE BLIND
NEW HOPE WAS BROUGHT to the blind and partially sighted children of Sierra Leone last month as a charity school in Freetown got a visit from its Sightsavers celebrity ambassador.
British actress Haydn Gwynne (pictured) flew to Freetown to experience a day in the life of a teacher of sight-impaired children. Gwynne, who is best known for starring in British TV programmes such as Peak Practice and Drop the Dead Donkey, visited the Milton Margai School of the Blind in Freetown, where she spent time helping the children with reading. Describing her time at the boarding school as amazing, she said the people of Freetown made her feel very welcome.
“It was the first time I had visited Africa,” she said. “To see the work and the dedication of the people there was incredibly inspiring and humbling. And it was wonderful to see how comfortable and confident the children were in their surroundings.”
Sightsavers is an international development charity working to combat blindness and support sight-impaired people. Sarah Warwick www.sightsavers.org
[BERLIN]
GERMANS LOVE ‘LOVE PADLOCKS’
LOCKING UP YOUR WIFE or girlfriend isn’t usually regarded as a nice thing to do. A new custom in Germany for creating ‘love padlocks’ has popular opinion behind it, however. Berlin’s lovers have taken up the custom of inscribing a padlock with their initials, locking it to a public bridge or building and throwing the key into the river. These ‘lovelocks’ caused controversy last month as Deutsche Bahn, the national railway company, threatened to remove them from a railway bridge. The craze started in Hungary in the 1990s, but it’s on the rise in many other European destinations including London’s Tower Bridge, Moscow’s Luzhkov Bridge and Kelvingrove Skate Park in Glasgow. SW
[LONDON]
SEEING RED
RED SKY AT NIGHT? You must be in Kensington Gardens, where a London- bus-coloured structure is drawing culture vultures for evening delights. Every year, the Serpentine Gallery commissions a new pavilion for its lawn, with this year’s designed by French architect Jean Nouvel. The best way to experience the open-air café and event pavilion is to pop along to one of the Park Nights. Highlights include an evening with Lebanese-American poet Etel Adnan on 3 October, and a showing of the 1995 eco-scare movie, Safe, featuring our cover star, Julianne Moore. If that’s all a bit highbrow, head to the Scoop amphitheatre on the South Bank to see free mainstream movies, including The Kite Runner and Up in the Air. www.serpentinegallery.org, www.morelondon.co.uk
[ZURICH]
KICK BACK WITH A COW
STRESSED URBAN PROFESSIONALS in Switzerland are choosing to unwind by heading to the mountains to rent a cow for the weekend. City workers have been rushing to sign up to the scheme launched by herder Michael Izor, who is offering a selection of friendly cows to rent on his farm in west- ern Switzerland, just outside Zurich. Izor says “the animals are very calming and we hope it gives people a little perspective.” For £230, you can reserve a cow of your choice from a catalogue, where animals are show- cased in meadow and alpine settings. www.mavachamoi.ch
[VIENNA]
KAHLO ON SHOW
VIENNA’S KUNSTFORUM welcomed art works from around the world this month in preparation for Austria’s first-ever Frida Kahlo retrospective.
Kahlo was once most famous as the wife of Mexico’s best-loved muralist Diego Rivera but has become widely known in her own right over the last decade, as much for her tragic life as for her colourful paintings. In 2002 a Hollywood retrospective of her life – Frida – was made with Salma Hayek in the title role.
Curators at the Kunstforum said they were proud to welcome 60 of Kahlo’s best-known works to the gallery, many of them on show in Europe for the first time: “In view of the marginal number of paintings Kahlo produced, the lack of her oeuvre in European collections, and the sparsity of exhibition projects in Europe, we consider this show as a sensation for Vienna,” said a spokesman. SW
Until 5 December. Kunstforum, 8 Freyung, www.bankaustria-kunstforum.at
[MOSCOW]
FIRST SCUBA DOG WOWS THE WORLD
HOW EAGER WOULD YOU BE FOR YOUR PETS TO SHARE YOUR HOBBIES? Keen enough to build a specialist scuba diving suit for your dog? We thought not. But one Russian man, professional diver Sergei Gorbunov, has created a special canine swimsuit and helmet for his pet dachshund Boniface so they can go ‘walkies’ together underwater. He claims that whenever he went diving without him in the past, the dog would get upset. “Taking him with me was the only sensible solution.”
In a recent video demonstration of the suit posted on the internet, Gorbunov helps the dog into the suit and takes him for a short dive. He later outlined his plans to train Boniface to dive deeper with him and was adamant that the puppy has developed a taste for deep-sea diving and enjoyed it immensely. The world’s media was agog at the sight of the world’s first scuba dog. One Russia Today news reporter said it might give the puppy a new ‘leash of life’. Sarah Warwick
[ LONDON ]
HEAR SOME TRACKS AT THE TRAIN STATION
THIS SUMMER’S SUCCESSFUL Station Sessions, returning for its second season, will take you on a voyage of musical discovery. It features new and emerging talents from across the globe. You can catch the likes of country-blues star Diane Birch, whose iTunes Single of the Week Rise Up has sold over 500,000 copies, six-piece indie band Tom Williams and the Boat, who have been on the stages of Glastonbury and Latitude this summer, and indie-folk four-piece My First Tooth, granted a Best Band Name of the Week award by NME. Best of all, it’s all free. SW St Pancras International, 6-7pm, Thursdays, September & October, www.stationsessions.com
