Chronicle of a Last Summer

Ein erstaunliches Buch. Durch die Augen und Gedanken der Ich-Erzählerin beobachten wir die Ereignisse dreier Kairoer Sommer: 1984, 1998 und 2014. Allen drei Etappen im Leben der Protagonistin ist die Stille, das Nicht-Wissen, Nicht-Fragen-Können eigen. Trotzdem, mit dem Erwachsenwerden eignet sich die Erzählerin Strategien an, wie zum Beispiel das Schreiben, um den lähmenden politischen und nüchternen familiären Verhältnissen etwas entgegen zu halten. Es ist ein bedrückendes Buch, nichtsdestotrotz lohnt es sich sehr, es zu lesen. Chronicle of a Last Summer gibt mit gekonnter Sprache die Stimmung einer frustrierten Gesellschaft wieder, die  in ihrem Kampf zu überleben und der herrschenden Unterdrückung Widerstand zu leisten, agoniert. ap

Cairo, 1984. A blisteringly hot summer. A young girl in a sprawling family house. She passes her days quietly: listening to her mother's phone conversations, looking at the Nile from a bedroom window, watching the three state-sanctioned TV stations with the volume off, daydreaming about other lives. Underlying this claustrophobic routine is mystery and loss. Relatives mutter darkly about the newly appointed President Mubarak. Everyone talks with melancholy about the past. People disappear overnight. And her own father has left too – why, or to where, no one will say. The story unfolds over three pivotal summers, from her youth to adulthood: as a six-year-old absorbing the world around her, filled with questions she can't ask; as a college student and aspiring filmmaker preoccupied with love, language, and the repression that surrounds her; and later, in the turbulent aftermath of Mubarak's overthwrow, as a writer considering the silences that have shaped her life. At once a mapping of a city in transformation and a story about the shifting realities and fates of a single Egyptian family, Yasmine El Rashidi's Chronicle of a Last Summer traces the fine line between survival and complicity, exploring the conscience of a generation raised in silence.

"An uncannily clairvoyant and astute portrayal of metropolitan life in Egypt. Yasmine El Rashidi's book offers both an unsparing glimpse into Cairo after the Arab Spring and a moving account of a young Egyptian woman's maturation from early girlhood through adolescence and adulthood." André Aciman, author of Out of Egypt

Yasmina El Rashidi is an Egyptian writer. She is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and an editor of the Middle East arts and culture quarterly Bidoun. El Rashidi is currently translating the works of Egyptian novelist Khairallah Ali. She lives in Cairo.