A book review on Hala Halims work - Alexandrian Cosmopolitanism: An Archive This is a labour of love, written by no other than a native Alexandrian, Hala Halim, and bound up by a profound love for the coastal city. With a name that establishes an identity—claimed and reclaimed as a Greek colony, straddling continents—Alexandria is a precarious place, with epithets that convey a palimpsest of identities and loyalties: “Iskindiriyya mariyya,” “Alexandrea ad Aegyptum,” “Spiritual City,” “Unreal City,” “Capital of an Asiatic Europe,” seat of theology and its sister discipline, philosophy, but also of science and medicine. Through it all, Alexandria is a vortex of energy, alluring, shaping and reshaping, immortal in its self-assurance and in its transcendence of time and place. Just as bewitching is Cavafy, the golden lad of the city. All attempts to unmask Alexandria are by default attempts to reach the elusive and equally mysterious Greek Alexandrian poet. (Reviewed by Nazek Fahmy)
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 09:27:30 +0000
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