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  • Fawzia Assaad (1929-, Egypt) – L’Égyptienne (‘The Egyptian’, 1975) depicts the impact of the 1952 Egyptian revolution and the wars with Israel on the life of an Egyptian Coptic woman (reference).
  • ʿĀdil ʿAṣmat (1959-, Egypt) – Ḥikāyāt Yūsif Tādrus (2015, English trans. Tales of Yusuf Tadros, 2018). Narrated by a Coptic Christian and set in several rural Egyptian cities, this novel portrays both the coming of age of a young artist as he paints his way through puberty and the worsening conditions of Egyptian Christians in their home country (reference). One instance in which the narrator is confronted with this latter is when he has an affair with a Muslim woman. The novel won the 2016 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature (also in O: Occupations, Professions and Hobbies: Arts).
  • Salwā Bakr’s (1949-, Egypt) – Al-Bashmūrī (1998, English trans. The Man from Bashmour, 2007). This two-part novel is set in the 9th century Abbasid era of the caliph Maʾmūn, when the Egyptian Christians (Copts) fought their Abbasid rulers in a revolt which was eventually crushed (reference). Following the crackdown, many Copts were exiled into Antakya or sold on slave markets in the Levant and Baghdad (reference). In addition to depicting a dark period of Egyptian history, the novel describes in detail the traditions of the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church and the Syriac Orthodox Church and the historical relations between the Coptic Church and other Christian religions (reference) (also in H: Historical novels: Abbasid period (750 – 1258 CE)).
  • Walīd ʿalāʾ al-Dīn (?, Egypt) – Ibn al-Qibṭiyya (‘Son of the Coptic woman’, 2016). The novel centers on the difficulties a young man, Yūsuf, encounters while living in Cairo, due to him having a Muslim father and a Coptic mother. His girlfriend’s parents for example, do not agree to her marrying him. Yūsuf has two friends, one of whom, Munthir, tries to convince him to convert to Islam, and the other, Gūrj, who is a Copt frowning upon Munthir’s polarizing behavior. Yūsuf is also influenced by his father’s love for God expressed in his Sufi belief. The novel furthermore refers to Jewish life in Egypt though the story of Rakhal (reference).
  • Hadrā Jirjis (1980-, Egypt) – Ṣayyād al-Malāʾikah (‘Angels’ hunter’, 2014). This novel is set in a time period of 6 hours and describes a violent episode in the coexistence of Copts and Muslims in Upper Egypt (reference). Its protagonist is a Coptic man, Ḥannā, who gets into a spat when he encounters the prostitute in the shop of his Muslim friend Manṣūr. Throughout the six hours, the novel also depicts the growing up of Ḥannā in the rural Egyptian village (reference).
  • Idwār al-Kharrāṭ (1926 – 2015, Egypt) – Rāma wa al-Tinnīn (1980, English trans. Rama and the Dragon, 2002), Turābuhā Zaʿfrān (1985, English trans. City of Saffron, 1989) and al-Zaman al-Ākhir (‘The other time’, 1998).

Rāma wa al-Tinnīn revolves around the relationship between the Copt Mīkhāʾīl and the Muslim Rāma – a relationship that ranges between the overtly sexual and the mystical, and which constitutes a daring theme in view of the taboos on marriage between Muslim women and non-Muslim men (reference) (also in L: Love, Lust, and Relationships: Inter-religious and ethnic (romantic) relationships: Between Muslims and Christians).

 

The novel Turābuhā Zaʿfrān relives the memories of Mīkhāʾīl as a boy in Alexandria of the 1930s and 1940s in a family whose father fails to support his family (reference). Each of the novel’s chapters represent a phase in his life in which he gradually discovers and understands the world around him. In the novel al-Zaman al-Ākhar, Mīkhāʾīl and Rāma resume their relationship after a chance meeting at a conference.

 

Many of Idwār al-Kharrāṭ’s short stories also revolve around the Coptic community. His story ‘Jurḥ Maftūḥ’ (‘Open wound’, 1969), for example, takes place in a Coptic community in Upper Egypt. It depicts episodes of a man’s relationship with a woman, Agayya, who has recently been assaulted, although it is not clear by who and how. Different perspectives are given on the events that occurred. Agayya is described as if representing the land of Egypt, but her character also symbolically refers to the Virgin Mary (reference).

 
  • Rʾaūf Musʿād (1937-, Egypt) – Zahrat al-Ṣamt (‘Flower of silence’, 2016). Through the stories of a priestess mother and her young daughter who flee the Arab invasion of pharaonic Egypt, the novel describes ancient pharaonic histories and myths such as that of Iziz and Osiris. It relates these to an actual and imagined history of Egypt, Copts, and Arabs, especially the discrimination and prosecution of Coptic Christians, from the pharaonic time until now (reference) (also in H: Historical Novels: Pharaohs).
  • Khayrī Shalabī (1938 – 2011, Egypt) – Isṭāssiyah (‘Estasia’, 2010). A Coptic widow living in the Egyptian Delta becomes a local legend when she tries to revenge her son’s murder through prayer. Help eventually comes from one of the villages Muslims, a young man whose family is known for their cruelty, who decides the investigate the murder (reference).
  • ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm Qāsim’s (1934 – 1990, Egypt) novella al-Mahdī (‘The Mehdi’) portrays a Coptic umbrella maker and his wife who settle in a village where the Muslim Brothers are directly and indirectly pressuring them to convert them to Islam (reference). The novella depicts the degree to which the Muslim Brotherhood is penetrated into Egyptian villages, and the ways they try to convert local people (reference). It can be found in the collection al-Mahdī wa Ṭuraf min Khabr al-Ākhirah (1984, English trans. Rites of Assent: Two Novellas, 1995).
  • Amīr Tāj al-Sir (1960-, Sudan) – Tawatturāt al-Qubṭī (‘The Copt’s worries’, 2009). This novel’s protagonist is Mīkhāʾīl, a Copt living in the village of al-Sūr in Sudan at the end of the 19th century during a tumultuous period that resembles that of the Mehdi revolution against the Ottoman rulers (reference). Mīkhāʾīl, who lost his beloved fiancé and his job with the siege of the city by the revolutionaries, is forced to reinvent himself as the Muslim Saʿad al-Mabrūk, the character through which the events of the revolution and the changes it brings to the village are narrated (reference) (also in 1844 – 1885 Mahdi State Sudan).
  • Amīn al-Zāwī (1956-, Algeria) – Ḥādī al-Tuyūs (‘The goatherd’, 2012). Three French Catholic women in Ghazaouet, Algeria, decide to convert to Islam, each with their own motive: Mārtīn in search of an Arab man; Kātrīn for her love of Arab music; and Gābrīl to spy on the Muslim community (reference). Their conversion provokes conflict among the Muslim men in the city, among them the Imam of the mosque they attend.
  • Yūsuf Zaydān (1958-, Egypt) – ʿAzāzīl (2008 English trans. Azazeel, 2012). A fictional memoir of a fifth-century Coptic doctor-monk named Hypa, this novel tells of his spiritual and physical trip from Alexandria to Syria. It describes the monk’s encounters with temptations and with the devil, ʿAzāzīl, as well as corruption and greed in the early Church. This latter caused controversy when the novel was published because it offended members of the Coptic Church. The novel aims to underline how ridiculous – and yet dangerous – squabbles between religious sects can be (reference). ʿAzāzīl won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2009.

Refrences:

In order of appearance

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  2. Marcia Lynx Qualey. 2018. “Book Review: ‘Tales of Yusuf Tadros’ explores how ‘suffering purifies’.” www.thenational.ae, 12 August 2018, https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/book-review-tales-of-yusuf-tadros-explores-how-suffering-purifies-1.758931 (last accessed 11 January 2019)
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