A glimpse of life underground, between humanity and machine jams, overcrowded subway stops, pollution, dirt, blinding and only hot air mixed with sand.
And cultural ferment, political commitment, inter-generational strife, endemic corruption and nobility of spirit, generous and free. Poised between love and hate, on the border between labile worship hypnotic disgust and revulsion, as only those who have lived in a large African capital has experienced the same moment.
This is "Metro", a comic published in Cairo Egypt in 2008 in a few hundred copies and immediately went into hiding because censored by the authorities.
Because the first graphic novel ever has displaced the Egyptian political leadership, abituatasi the disputes in recent years, but all in all controllable through tools: Sporadic and "bald" manifestations of political activists, with the party Al Ghad (Tomorrow) of Ayman Nour and the movement Kefaya (Enough) at the forefront yesterday, and the reformist Mohammed El Baradei, Former number one of the United Nations Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) engaged today.
And then a few novel by internationally renowned "reclaimed" by the censors ("The Yacoubian Building" by Alaa El Aswani) and independent newspapers to ensure a functional pluralist facade under thirty years of Hosni Mubarak.
But no drawings, no one had thought to turn into comic everyday reality of a country of 80 million inhabitants, of whom about half semi-illiterate. And on top of using the dialect, that is the language spoken by the people, ironic and irreverent, disillusioned and fatalistic. This must have crowded out the (almost) one-party National Democrat, already struggling with elusive blogger.
Now the tables from the suddenly dry, which gives the little Baroque, a young designer Magdy El Shafie, pharmacist training, will reach the Italian public with an edition edited by The Sirente, for the translation of Ernesto Pagano, out in end of November.
"This is a bet to see if Italy will have to wait for a response from the public. But I have no doubts about the value of comics, "he told the translator Lettera43.it Ernesto Pagano, behind the experience, again for the Sirente, with his bestseller" Taxi "by Khaled Al Khamissi (a collection of dialogues between real and paradoxical the author Taxi drivers and Cairo).
It is also thought to make the Egyptian dialect with the Sicilian, to translate the excitement of colorful language. Then, the final choice of Italian current.
"The characters are typed by a decision" as Shehade, the protagonist, a brilliant young university student and frustrated because it will be difficult to realize its ambitions into a reality that property as the Arab country.
And then a succession of "puppets" tormented, including journalists, shoeshine, porters and "street urchins" of neighborhoods, immigrants in the capital of the Saïd, the Deep South
All 'in a cage, a metaphor the social and cultural captivity "in which they are conscious of living especially the young, Pagano said, convinced that" Metro "can have an audience among those" who want to discover a different Egypt, now, away from Sharm El Sheikh " in constant boiling.
signals in the Italian publishing world and, consequently, the audience, are there: while the Arabic language flourish university and non university, there are literary series of experiments focusing on new emerging phenomena of Arabic literature. Sometimes "caught" between the lines of its most outrageous, outspoken. Or, why not trade.
Per immagini e contenuti, ritenuti troppo spinti, autore ed editore, Mohammed Sharqawi, sono stati processati e condannati alla distruzione di tutte le copie del volume. Quelle ancora nelle librerie. Per le altre, rien ne va plus.
http://www.lettera43.it/articolo/2747/la-graphic-novel-censurata-in-egitto.htm
0 comments:
Post a Comment