Explore books by AUC alumni and faculty! AUC Press offers a range of titles in digital and print
Explore books by AUC alumni and faculty! AUC Press offers a range of titles in digital and print.
A Daring Enterprise: A US-Egyptian Partnership and the Case for Soft Power
James A. Harmon, Cornelius Queen and Mark Warren
This behind-the-scenes account explores the Egyptian-American Enterprise Fund, a private investment fund created by the U.S. Congress following Egypt’s 2011 revolution to support the country’s private sector. Drawing on the firsthand experience of fund chairman James Harmon, a veteran investment banker and former Clinton administration official, the authors trace how the U.S.-backed initiative partnered with Egyptian businesses to generate investment, create jobs and expand opportunities for women amid political instability and strained U.S.-Egyptian relations. The book examines the fund as an unconventional model of foreign assistance, asking how investment can address development challenges while producing tangible returns — and what its experience reveals about the potential of soft power.
Red Like Orange: A Novel
Charles Akl, translated by Sarah Enany
Winner of the Sawiris Cultural Award, this offbeat novel follows Local, who moves from Alexandria to Cairo following a breakup and finds himself drawn into the city’s music scene. After discovering an old accordion in his new apartment, he and his roommate, who has never played an instrument, embark on an unlikely musical experiment: putting his mother’s cookbook to music. What follows is a raucous journey through Cairo’s early-2000s hangouts, debates over music and improvised jam sessions, alongside an eclectic cast of friends and musicians. Moving between Egyptian popular music and American rock, from Mohamed Mounir to Pink Floyd, Red Like Orange captures the humor, uncertainty and creative energy of a young generation finding its voice just outside the mainstream.
I Can Imagine It for Us: A Palestinian Daughter’s Memoir
Mai Serhan
Mai Serhan lives in Cairo and has never been to Palestine, the country from which her family was expelled in 1948. She was 24 years old when she received a phone call one morning from her estranged father. His health was failing, and he might not have long to live, so he asked her to join him in China where he runs a business empire about which Mai knows nothing. Mai agreed to go in the hopes that they would become close, but this strange new country was as unknowable to her as her father. There, the ghosts of the Nakba come to haunt them both. Spanning Egypt, Lebanon, Dubai, China and, of course, Palestine, this memoir is filled with tragedy and loss woven through with an understated humor and much grace.
The Devil Turns Preacher: Eight One-Act Plays
Naguib Mahfouz, translated by Sarah Enany and Nehad Selaiha
Naguib Mahfouz is best known for the novels and short stories that earned him global acclaim and the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he also ventured into drama. Written in the 1960s and 1970s, these eight one-act plays were performed in Cairo before largely disappearing from view. Now published in English for the first time, the collection reveals a lesser-known side of Mahfouz’s writing, marked by suspense, sharp pacing and an eclectic dramatic style influenced by figures such as Ionesco, Camus and Beckett. Beneath their theatrical experimentation, the plays carry political subtexts reflecting a pivotal period in Egyptian history, including the wars with Israel and the decline of Nasserism.