BOOKS
Confessions of a Knight Errant
Confessions of a Knight Errant
Confessions of a Knight Errant is a comedic, picaresque novel in the tradition of Don Quixote with a flamboyant cast of characters. Dr. Gary Watson is the picaro, a radical environmentalist and wannabe novelist who has been accused of masterminding a computer hack that wiped out the files of a major publishing company. His Sancho Panza is Kharalombos, a fat, gluttonous Greek dancing teacher, who is wanted by the secret police for cavorting with the daughter of the Big Man of Egypt. Self-preservation necessitates a hurried journey to the refuge of a girls’ camp in rural Texas. Then a body turns up nearby that is connected to Middle East antiquities, and they are on the run once more.
SHAHRAZAD'S TOOTH
In the Empty Flat Upstairs, a Japanese woman, Keiko, has mastered Arabic but is driven crazy by her insistence on knowing the literal truth in a city which values hyperbole and exaggeration. In contrast, an Egyptian neighbor, Mona, becomes so obsessed with watching her foreign gay neighbor that she completely loses interest in her husband and her domestic responsibilities. Instead of watching soap operas, she hangs over the balcony, fascinated and shocked by what she sees. In the final story of the collection, Karalombos and Gary, two fugitives on the run, sneak back into Egypt on the 28th of January 2011, only to find Cairo turned upside down. They take care of the pets of those expatriates who have fled the country. To their surprise, they are even recruited to be actors in a reality television show about the Pyramids during the Egyptian Revolution.
In the Empty Flat Upstairs, a Japanese woman, Keiko, has mastered Arabic but is driven crazy by her insistence on knowing the literal truth in a city which values hyperbole and exaggeration. In contrast, an Egyptian neighbor, Mona, becomes so obsessed with watching her foreign gay neighbor that she completely loses interest in her husband and her domestic responsibilities. Instead of watching soap operas, she hangs over the balcony, fascinated and shocked by what she sees. In the final story of the collection, Karalombos and Gary, two fugitives on the run, sneak back into Egypt on the 28th of January 2011, only to find Cairo turned upside down. They take care of the pets of those expatriates who have fled the country. To their surprise, they are even recruited to be actors in a reality television show about the Pyramids during the Egyptian Revolution
THREE STORIES FROM CAIRO
THREE STORIES FROM CAIRO
The first story is told from the point of view of Keiko, a Japanese girl in Cairo preparing to return home to teach Arabic to businessmen in Tokyo. The apartment above her is supposed to be empty, but Keiko hears noises. Cairo is noisy. Of course the Bawab, the super, tells her she is imagining things, especially “drilling” noises. In fact, the key has been rented, loaned and copied so often that there actually is a woman up there sewing belly dancer costumes. A part-time prostitute uses the place, as does a young man. In a flight of fancy, McCullough describes a herd of cats who congregate there, complete with dialogue. “Fat Louie played the piano. Sasha played the drums.” Everyone lies to the foreigner. No matter. She will leave soon. In “Taken Hostage by the Ugly Duck,” Hada, an uptight conventional housewife disappointed with her own life, is scandalized by the British gay man across the alley. He is often naked, entertains young men, makes a lot of noise. To retaliate, she buys, inexplicably, a great blue heron that “yaws” noisily at him. He counters by buying a parrot that sings, loudly, “Wait a minute, Mr. Postman,” and “I’m on the top of the world, looking down on creation.” When the flat across the alley goes silent, Hoda misses the excitement and even imagines foul play. “The Story of Fresh Springs” is a murder mystery, sort of. Two young women, Pomegranate and Peach, are murdered. Detectives Hawks and Falcon are on the case. In time, a virile young man “Superboy,” a kind of acrobat, is arrested probably wrongly, since it seems he has really been using his athletic skills to climb up trees and into the bedrooms of willing, bored housewives. Like McCullough’s other stories, this too ascends into the metaphorical/fantastic as the detectives quell crowd unrest by threatening to let loose a pack of cross-eyed Chihuahuas, trained to chew off the big toes of protesters. The physical volume of these Cairo stories itself reflects the international nature of her work. First, one reads the stories “normally,” from the front to the middle of the book. Then, if able, one can read the stories in Arabic translation, a collaboration between McCullough and Egyptian poet and editor Mohamed Metwalli, from the back of the book to the middle, there meeting the end of the English version.
a song by the aegean sea
A Song by the Aegean Sea is a song for the unsung heroes of the coast of Izmir, Turkey, or Smyrna, that cosmopolitan city through the different ages. The book celebrates the underbelly of the city; the gypsies selling flowers, the roving musicians, the mussel-sellers, and the protestors. The elements of the city’s coastline are also merged with the characters in an impressionistic, yet surreal canvas from a stranger’s point of view. The traveler, i.e., the poet, or the singer of the Aegean song yearns to become part of the scene.
THREE STORIES FROM CAIRO
Shahrazad's Gift
Shahrazad’s Gift is a collection of linked short stories set in contemporary Cairo—magical, absurd and humorous. The author focuses on the off-beat, little-known stories, far from CNN news: a Swedish belly dancer who taps into the Oriental fantasies of her clientele; a Japanese woman studying Arabic, driven mad by the noise and chaos of the city; a frustrated Egyptian housewife who becomes obsessed by the activities of her Western gay neighbor; an American journalist who covered the civil war in Beirut who finds friendship with her Egyptian dentist. We also meet the two protagonists of McCullough’s Confessions of a Knight Errant, before their escapades in that story. These stories are told in the tradition of A Thousand and One Nights.
Praise for Gretchen 's Books
Few literary works have dealt with the Egyptian Revolution in 2011 as well as this novel did, whether in Arabic or English, by the American author, Gretchen McCullough. McCullough survived the events of the uprising at Tahrir Square—the novel focuses on a group of expatriates who stayed in the country. It would appeal to the lovers of detective novels as much it would appeal to wacky fantasy lovers and uses literary humor, which is emphasized in an alleged message by Colonel Muammar Qaddafi of Libya. The reader might share the author’s sarcasm about overwhelming globalization and the American lifestyle, whose advocates want to impose it on the rest of the world. Wait! It’s not just that. The reader might get free lessons in the art of cooking.
—Sonallah Ibrahim, Egyptian novelist
