“Not a Picture, a Precise Kick”—metafiction
A writer from Cairo imagines a chance encounter between two writers in Prague enamored of Kafka.
Fatima El-Kalay
Mansoura Ez Eldin is an Egyptian novelist and short story writer. Her works have been translated into more than ten languages. She is the author of three short story collections: ضوء مهتز [Shaken Light] (2001), نحو الجنون [Towards Madness] (2013) and مأوى الغياب [Shelter of Absence] (2018), and five novels: متاهة مريم [Mariam’s Maze] (2004), وراء الفردوس [Beyond Paradise] (2009),جبل الزمرد [Emerald Mountain] (2014), أخيلة الظل [Shadow Specters] (2017) and بساتين البصرة [The Orchards of Basra] (2020). خطوات في شنغهاي[Walks in Shanghai: on the Meaning of Distance Between Egypt and China] won the 2021 Ibn Battuta Prize for travel literature; in 2014, the Sharjah International Book Fair nominated her جبل الزمرد [Emerald Mountain] as Best Arabic Novel. وراء الفردوس [Beyond Paradise] was IPAF-shortlisted in 2010. Her articles have been published in the New York Times, Granta, A Public Space, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). She is the managing editor of the cultural weekly Akhbar Al-Adab, and since 2003, its book review editor.
Fatima El-Kalay is a translator, writer and poet. Her work has appeared in Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, the Shadow and Light Project, Rowayat, Anomalous Press and Passionfruit. She was shortlisted for her flash fiction in the London Independent Story Prize, and in the ArabLit Story Prize for short fiction in translation.