Framing the (in)sensible in Egypt’s post-2011 satirical novels in The Queue and Cats of the Eluded Year

Abstract

After Egypt’s 2011 Revolution and the trials and tribulations that led to the re-ascendancy of the old regime to state control, policies of repression intensified to silence dissidents and limit the freedom of cultural expression. The inventiveness of Egyptian novels, however, has not only withstood that authoritarian political temperament, but also managed to perforate its enforced wall of silence, carrying on protest in the cacophonous outcries for change in their artistic expression. This article reads two satirical novels produced in the post-2011 Egyptian context, Basma Abdel Aziz’s al-Tabur, 2013 (The Queue, 2016) and Ibrahim Abdel Meguid’s Qitat al-ᶜam al-faᵓit, 2017 (Cats of the Eluded Year), as examples of the current novelistic undertakings aiming to polemically subvert and destabilize the status quo. Drawing on Mikahil Bakhtin’s conceptions of satire, heteroglossia, and the carnivalesque, the article explores their inventive aesthetics and peculiar combination of seemingly paradoxical literary attitudes, such as realism and fantasy, tragedy and comedy, bluntness and cynicism, as well as the fusion of human heroism and indignation. Providing a survey of Egyptian satire and its correlation with inverting systems of dominance, the article examines these satirical novels as historical forms that respond to pervasive power asymmetries in their postcolonial context.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Vivienne Matthies-Boon in her study “Shattered Worlds: Political Trauma amongst Young Activists in Post-revolutionary Egypt” mentions such violent acts experienced by the activists themselves or their friends and family members. Those acts included being “teargassed,” “injured,” “detained,” “tortured,” and “sexually abused.” (Matthies-Boon 621).

2 Mohamed Morsi collapsed and died on June 17, 2019 in a sound-proof cage in a courtroom during his trial for multiple accusations including inciting violence and collusion with foreign groups.

3 The Penal code in Egypt does not permit more than two years of remand detention.

4 The Washington Post report by Sudarsan Raghavan is originally published on April 23, 2016 under the title of “In new Egyptian textbooks, ‘it’s like the revolution didn’t happen.’” For complete access, visit <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-new-egyptian-textbooks-its-like-the-revolution-didnt-happen/2016/04/23/846ab2f0-f82e-11e5-958d-d038dac6e718_story.html>.

5 “In Egyptian textbooks, the revolution never happened: Washington Post,” Aswat Masriya, Egypt Independent, April 25, 2016. Last accessed 20 Aug, 2019 https://ww.egyptindependent.com/egyptian-textbooks-revolution-never-happened-washington-post/.

6 For more information on the efforts of PEN centers in the U.S. and Europe, visit the PEN AMERICA, the Freedom to Write webpage, “Galal El-Behairy,” on https://pen.org/advocacy-case/galal-el-behairy/.

7 For the complete entry from May 2018 on the letter Galal El-Behairy wrote from prison, visit “A Letter from Tora Prison, Galal El Behairy” on Artists at Risk Connection ­webpage https://artistsatriskconnection.org/story/a-letter-from-tora-prison-galal-el-behairy. Accessed 2 Dec, 2019.

8 This is my translation of the novel’s Arabic excerpt.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary Youssef

Mary Youssef is an Associate Professor of Arabic at Binghamton University. Her research and teaching focus on questions of belonging and marginalization in modern Arabic literature and Arab literary production in the diaspora. Her book Minorities in the Contemporary Egyptian Novel (Edinburgh University Press, 2018) studies the recent rise of “new-consciousness” novels in Egypt and their foregrounding of the experiences of its racial, gender, and ethno-religious minorities. The book also examines the historical transformations that surround such novelistic undertakings and herald the January Revolution in 2011.