Edwar al-Charrat

Edwar al-Charrat was born in 1926 in Alexandria , Egypt. During his Law studies, which he completed in 1946, he worked in a British marine depot and immediately after that at the Egyptian National Bank. Because of his participation in the activities of the anti-colonial movement, he had to accept the punishment of a two-year prison sentence (1948-1950). Following this, al-Charrat was active in many areas before he took his post in 1958 as Second General Secretary of the »Organisation for the Solidarity of Afro-Asiatic Peoples« and also of the »Association of Afro-Asiatic writers.« He held these posts until 1983. Since then he has been living as a freelance author in Cairo. Up to this point he had hardly published any literary work of his own, the sole exception being the first volume of stories, »High Walls« (1959). However, he was active as a literary critic, translator, editor, and a representative of Egyptian literature in the international context. One of his most important jobs was and still is to encourage new literary forms and styles of writing in Egypt, for which he himself coined the concept »New Sensibility«. When al-Charrat began writing in the early fifties he sought a literary path going beyond Realism which was the dominant idea up until then, with its traditional concepts time and space. At the centre of his stories and novels there is the power of memory which often takes on autobiographic traits. In al-Charrat’s first novel, »Safranerde« (1985), the world of Michael Kaldas’ memory constitutes the central theme. Like the author, Michael Kaldas is a Copt. In unconnected episodes and scraps of memory which follow no chronology, the aging narrator sees images of Alexandria in the thirties and forties, of the Alexandria of his childhood and adolescence. Experiences and influences which have determined the protagonist’s inner development are evoked: the discovery of the Muslim neighbours, for the Coptic boy an unknown world, the gradual awareness of the female body and of sexuality, the awakeing of a political consciousness, penetrating into the secret world of literature. All these are woven together with poetic reflections on sensuality, love, death and loneliness. Also, in his latest book to be translated into German, »Die Steine des Bobello«, published in 1992, al-Charrat remains faithful to his writer’s creed of »New Sensibility« which he sums up as follows: »The story is not an inevitable report about events and deeds, no matter whether in straight or broken chronology. The story is also concerned with emotions and thoughts as they develop or it can take the form of a description – concrete, visual and sensuous – of things of stirrings of the soul. Only this type  of description, in my opinion, makes genuine narrative. That is at least what I am aiming for.« Edwar al-Charrat was a guest of the Arab League at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2004.

The author died on December 1, 2015. 

© international literature festival berlin

Safranerde
Lenos
Basel, 1985
Übersetzung: Hartmut Fähndrich

Die Steine des Bobello
Lenos
Basel, 2000
Übersetzung: Hatmut Fähndrich, Edward Badeen

Übersetzer: Edward Badeen, Hartmut Fähndrich