In December 2007 the Alexandria Library and the British Council in Egypt organized a celebration to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. HereMona Anis revisits the work, puts it in the context of the life of its author and the history of the country on which it pontificates, and offers a new post-colonial reading of its different novels. She also questions the rationale behind such celebration and raises some pertinent questions about its exaggerated status among Egyptian intellectuals despite its 'orientalist' portrayal of Egypt and its skewed picture of Alexandria.

Al-Kalimah has established a link with the New Left Review to translate some of its articles into Arabic. Here Al-Kalimah offers its translation of Mike Davis' article on Dubai, the new Mecca of conspicuous consumption, and the economic crimes of the post modern world.

Confronting a suitcase full of notebooks left by his father, himself a writer, Orhan Pamuk experienced troubling emotions - anxiety, rivalry, shame. Here the Nobel laureate pays tribute to his most loyal reader, his real father, and his symbolic one, European literature.

The Syrian critic Subhi Hadidi is one of a handful Arab critics who know the oeuvre of Edward Said well, having known Said personally for many years, interviewed him extensively in Arabic and wrote a book on his work. Here he offers a fascinating reading that bonds and separates the two great critics and shed new light on their work.

The late 1960s ushered in a new period of experimentation in the Arabic novel, which for a significant group of writers took shape in a return to heritage. Najib Mahfuz, as one of the form’s most dedicated and prolific pioneers, was heavily involved in the exercise, and here Christina Phillips offers a close-reading to one of his pioneering texts in this respect.

This is the Retort Group's comment on the recent Israeli attack on Lebanon which appeared in the New Left Review 41 (Sept/Oct 2006). It is reproduced here with kind permission from NLR and its full Arabic translation is in the Arabic section of Al-Kalimah for its insightful analysis of the crisis and the politics of the spectacle.