Translating Egypt’s Political Cartoons

Jonathan Guyer Political cartoons present a daily snapshot of the gut reactions to current political and social issues. With each Egyptian newspaper publishing about five cartoons daily – and some papers up to a dozen – a range of perspectives is conveyed through punchy imagery and text penned in Egyptian colloquial Arabic. Since the 2011 uprising, a new cartoon renaissance

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CairoComix: Excavating the political

12 October 2015, Mada Masr By Jonathan Guyer “All comics are political,” wrote Allen Douglas and Fedwa Malti-Douglas in their seminal 1994 study Arab Comic Strips. But whether for children or adults, the forms of political expression in comics are never straightforward. Translated editions of Superman project cultural imperialism as well as the human need for heroes and villains. A comic advertising Stella beer

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Gallows Humor: Political Satire in Sisi’s Egypt

Guernica, 15 May 2014 By Jonathan Guyer The country’s cartoonists find creative ways to defy censors. His face is almost everywhere. With a stoic gaze and a stately uniform, Field Marshal Abdul-Fattah Al-Sisi looks out from magazine covers displayed at Cairo’s corner newsstands and posters decorating gas stations in sleepy Red Sea towns. Following the military’s ouster of the Muslim

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The Writing on Egypt’s Walls

14 August 2013, The New Yorker By Jonathan Guyer   n Egypt, political cartoons leap off the page and into public places, from street art to high-class galleries, on leaflets and TV programs. At the Muslim Brotherhood’s sit-in at Rabaa al-Adawiya, in the Nasr City neighborhood of Cairo, where protesters spent more than a month protesting the ouster of President

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Picturing Egypt’s Next President

22 May 2014, The New Yorker By Jonathan Guyer Everybody knows who Egypt’s next President will be. Elections are scheduled for May 26th and 27th, almost a year after Mohamed Morsi was ousted in a coup led by the retired general Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, in what has been painted as a second revolution. With campaigning in overdrive, Sisi met with

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Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution

ICWA: Institute of Current World Affairs Jonathan Guyer has contributed a chapter to Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution, a forthcoming book from Routledge. His chapter focuses on the translation of Arabic political cartoons. Here is Jonathan’s abstract: This chapter reflects critically on the translation of Arabic political cartoons, both in broad and narrow terms. The questions I

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The Arab whodunnit: crime fiction makes a comeback in the Middle East

  The neo-noir revolution in the Arab world might be seen as nostalgic, but it allows writers to act as ombudsmen in the current political climate Jonathan Guyer Friday 3 October 2014 From Baghdad to Cairo, a neo-noir revolution has been creeping across the Middle East. The revival of crime fiction since the upheavals started in 2011 should not come

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The Case of the Arabic Noirs

  August 20, 2014 | by Jonathan Guyer Cairo: the metal detector beeps. The security man wears a crisp white uniform. He nods and leans back in his chair. The lobby’s red oriental carpet, so worn it’s barely red, leads upstairs to the hotel tavern. Enter the glass doors, where a cat in a smart bow tie and vest reaches for a lonely

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