Barra and Zaman: Reading Egyptian Modernity in Shadi Abdel Salam’s The Mummy

"An electrifying, cubist portrait of a classic film’s place in the world. Youssef Rakha says that Shadi Abdel Salam’s The Mummy embodies 'a twilight zone of Egyptian modernity.' By writing about patriotism, grief, visual beauty, political entropy, colonialism, and sexuality, he brilliantly takes us into that modernity, that zone. Few people write about cinema with such zigzagging bravura or impertinent seriousness; not often do we get such a three-dimensional context for a film. This book will be as valuable to creative writers as it is to devotees of cinema or Egypt."
–Mark Cousins, film critic and director of The Story of Film: An Odyssey
"Youssef Rakha magnificently takes us on an intellectually stimulating and highly entertaining cultural journey through the frustrations and joys of modern Egypt using Shadi Abdel Salam’s masterpiece The Mummy as a tombstone touchstone. As acerbic, exciting, and politically astute as listening to The Last Poets with Godard-esque jump cuts, this stylish text makes traditional critical analysis feel like tales from the crypt."

–Kaleem Aftab, author of Spike Lee: That’s My Story and I’m Sticking To It

"An anecdotal and ultimately engaging meander through the imagined pasts and disjointed legacies of Egyptian history, setting out from and repeatedly returning to Shadi Abdel Salam's masterpiece.”

–Tim Power, archaeologist and historian, author of The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate
“Egyptian novelist Youssef Rakha captures the personal relationship with art that lies beneath all scholarly endeavor, but which too often gets lost in academic analysis.”

–Kevin Blankinship, Brigham Young University, USA

Brilliantly introduced by Nezar Andary, this book is a work of creative nonfiction that approaches writing on film in a fresh and provocative way. It draws on academic, literary, and personal material to start a dialogue with the Egyptian filmmaker Shadi Abdel Salam’s The Mummy (1969), tracing the many meanings of Egypt’s postcolonial modernity and touching on Arab, Muslim, and ancient Egyptian identities through watching the film.

Youssef Rakha is a novelist, poet, and essayist who writes in both Arabic and English. His work is widely anthologized and translated into many languages.