Welcome to Reflections

Bringing to you revolutionary art, creative writing and media experiences from Egypt, a country whose people are waging war against censorship and political oppression.

Comic Book Villians: Egyptian authorities ban the country’s first adult graphic novel

Only a few weeks after its publication, Egypt’s first graphic novel for adults was confiscated from Egyptian bookstores. Metro, the first attempt at this art form by author Magdy Al Shafie and publisher Malamih owned by Mohammed Al Sharqawi and Nayra El Sheikh, was deemed “indecent” by Egyptian authorities and quickly banned.
“Responding to art and [...]

Novelist Marwa Rakha on women and breaking ranks with the mainstream

“Losing your virginity does not mean that you are a slut, having sex with a man you love makes you human - nothing less and nothing more. We live in a society that loves lies and is in love with liars [but] you are better than them, way better,” is one advise Marwa Rakha, Egyptian [...]

Writer Nawal Al Saadawi: Uncompromising, even in the face of death threats

Nawal Al Saadawi, an Egyptian writer and a self-described Muslim feminist, prides herself for shocking the public during conversations on faith and government _ matters of taboo sensitivity in many corners of the Arab World.
“The president of Egypt is now putting the Muslim Brothers in prison. But perhaps in two years, both will work together. [...]

A dying model? Q&A with Egypt’s youngest news editor on newspapers, civil journalism and “the changing times”

Civil journalists have recently taken Egypt by storm when they succeeded where mainstream media has failed. With blogs, twitter pages, and Youtube channels as their medium, it was fairly easier for independent journalists, freelance writers, and even rogue bloggers to wriggle out of the clutches of censorship authorities and get away with covering events and [...]

A coming revolution? John R. Bradley’s “Inside Egypt” explores the possibilties

British writer John R. Bradley’s book is not only a meditative analysis of the volatile political and social environment currently engulfing Egypt, but it’s also a case in point of the resistance that any piece of literature faces if it contains direct criticism of the country’s ruling National Democratic Party.  Egypt’s equivalent of the thought [...]

Author of best-selling novel The Yacoubian Building laments the status quo as he waits for “the imminent uprising”

Egyptian author Alaa Al Aswani once said, in a statement that was recently quoted by British journalist Robert Fisk “that the regime’s ‘martyrs’ outnumber all the dead of Egypt’s wars against Israel – victims of railway accidents, ferry sinkings, the collapse of city buildings, sickness, cancers and pesticide poisonings —all victims of the corruption and [...]