Textes réunis et présentés par Azza Heikal Dans cet ouvrage les témoignages d’anciens voisins des immeubles Heikal évoquent avec nostalgie des souvenirs de jeunesse. Aujourd’hui dispersés de par le monde, ces anciens voisins et amis racontent leurs lieux et jeux d’enfance dans leur ville natale. Le lecteur découvre un microcosme où Égyptiens, Grecs, Danois, Anglais, Italiens, Syriens, Juifs, Français, Suisses et Palestiniens… cohabitaient harmonieusement dans un esprit d’échange et de tolérance. En réunissant ces témoignages, Azza Heikal a rendu hommage au cosmopolitisme et au savoir-vivre alexandrins, à l’hospitalité légendaire de cette ville phare.

In this volume, Azza Heikal has collected narratives by former residents of the Heikal buildings, many of whom are today dispersed across the globe. Their vivid accounts evoke the legendary cosmopolitanism and hospitality of their native city Alexandria during the mid-twentieth century. In this monograph, the reader will discover a microcosm in which Egyptians, Greeks, Danes, English, Italians, Syrians, Jews, French, Swiss and Palestinians all lived together in a spirit of harmony and tolerance.

مدرسة الإسكندرية السينمائية للتصوير السينمائي

Author: Sami Helmy and Ibrahim Desouki

In this book, two researchers Ibrahim Dessouki and Sami Helmy painstakingly explored and researched in the origins and roots of the beginnings of the Egyptian film industry, especially those that took place in Alexandria; in an attempt to document the full features and characteristics and style of this school of Alexandria in cinematography, and the beginnings through a group of photographers foreigners residing in Egypt and Alexandria who worked as photographers; example: Aziz Dores, Oorfnelli, Kiarana, and others. Also documented are their Egyptians pupils, such as the great director of photography Abdel Halim Nasr, and his brother the photographer Mahmoud Nasr.

Based on the Memories of Marie-Luise Nagel

Authors: Annelies Ismail and Mona Gabriel

Marie-Luise Nagel’s ancestors came to Egypt from Central Europe during the nineteenth century, attracted by the new opportunities created during Mohamed Ali’s era and by the inauguration of the Suez Canal. This book firstly traces how two families – the Nagels and the Giurgeviches - settled in Alexandria for several generations, becoming part of that vibrant cosmopolitan city. In the second part, the authors recount Marie-Luise Nagel’s own life story against a backdrop of historical events which changed the destiny of the city and the foreign communities which once thrived in it. Today in her early nineties, Marie-Luise Nagel is the only survivor of her family still living in Alexandria, as her relatives all left in search of a new future, scattered across the globe.

To download the monograph, click here:

http://www.bibalex.org/Attachments/Publications/Files/2013032013431649843_AlexandriawasourDestiny.pdf

عمر طوسون: أمير الإسكندرية

A member of the Egyptian royal family, Prince Omar Toussoun acquired a legendary status as a nationalist, scholar, man of action, patron of many of Alexandria’s societies, agricultural reformer and archeologist. This study of his life shows the Prince of Alexandria as he lived through some of the most significant events of Egypt’s modern history, from the bombardment of 1882 to World War II.

Author: Esther Zimmerli Hardman

In her memoirs, Esther Zimmerli Hardman paints the picture of a childhood in the cosmopolitan Alexandria of the early twentieth century. She evokes the life of a Swiss family and community with its traditions and customs blending in with other foreigners and local Egyptians. Through the eyes of a child we witness life in Alexandria during the Second World War and right up to the eve of the 1952 Revolution. Decades later, the author returns to find the city of her childhood totally transformed. As she visits old haunts, she discovers a changed city oblivious of its past.

Author: Sami Helmy

A survey of the characteristics of the Alexandrian figure as it appears in the Egyptian cinema. This monograph includes specific details and close analysis of films that deal with Alexandria, in an attempt to decipher Alexandria as a place and character gazing towards an open horizon.

Author: Desmond O’Grady

Irish poet and professor Desmond O’Grady (1935–) moved to Alexandria in the late 1970s to teach and write. He followed the trail of Callimachus, Cavafy and Durrell through the streets of the city, and composed poems about his impressions of the Alexandria immortalized by those writers. O’Grady also wrote about another city: the city of his own experience. After a thirteen year absence, he returned to discover a city altered almost beyond recognition. In this monograph, his autobiographical Alexandrian reflections made during the 1970s and the 1990s support his poetic anthology. His poems and prose show their author’s attempt to come to terms with his own lost youth, a yearning he expresses thus: “I felt that this was the city I had been wandering to, seeking, all the time…”

The narratives included in this monograph represent a slice of the life led by the aristocratic foreign communities of Alexandria from the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century. A French speaking Catholic family of Syrian origins, the Zoghebs moved for generations in the wealthy circles of cosmopolitan Alexandria. Then finally came the day when their world changed beyond recognition and was theirs no longer. Thus it was that they left for the four corners of the globe, and with their departure and that of many of their contemporaries, a whole way of life was to disappear forever.

Author: Sahar Hamouda

A member of the Egyptian royal family, Prince Omar Toussoun acquired a legendary status as a nationalist, scholar, man of action, patron of many of Alexandria’s societies, agricultural reformer and archeologist. This study of his life shows the Prince of Alexandria as he lived through some of the most significant events of Egypt’s modern history, from the bombardment of 1882 to World War II.