Tag Archives: Ahmed Al-Mahdi

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD   I’ve never been very partial towards reading heavy-duty fantasy novels, I’m loath to admit, let alone a full length fantasy novel in Arabic. So it was a refreshing change from my usual diet of hard sci-fi to read Ahmed Salah Al-Mahdi’s The Greek Papyrus: …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD   I had the good fortune of attending a book signing event once, with Ibrahim Nasrallah as the guest of honour, and during the question-answer session, somebody mentioned George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984. This was no coincidence since the book being signed away was Nasrallah’s …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD*   Attended a very interesting lecture the other day with a deceptively simple title: “The Dynamics of the Indo-Pacific Region: The Challenges and Opportunities for Japan”, by Professor Satoru Mori from the Hosei University in Tokyo, Japan. (Faculty of Law, Department of Global Politics; little …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD We tend to think of post-apocalyptic novels as the exclusive preserve of the modern world. We tend to think of science fiction in general as the exclusive preserve of the modern world. Not so, says Egypt’s youthful fantasy, SF author Ahmed Salah Al-Mahdi[1] in his …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD   Reem: Into the Unknown (2017), a novel by Ahmed Salah Al-Mahdi, is about a lovely little Egyptian girl with blue eyes and blonde hair who is being forced into witchcraft by her evil grandmother. The girl, Reem, crosses paths with the central protagonist of …