Maṣriyyānū di Carmine Cartolano: il successo di un autore italiano nella letteratura egiziana contemporanea
(Maṣriyyānū by Carmine Cartolano: The success of an Italian author in contemporary Egyptian literature)
in La rivista di Arablit, a. IV, n. 7-8, dicembre 2014, pp. 148-163.
Maṣriyyānū: yawmiyyāt muṣawwir īṭālī by Carmine Cartolano is a collection of anecdotes, in which the author himself is the protagonist. The word maṣriyyānū is the result of the union of two words: miṣrī and italiano. The author is an Italian photographer, instructor and translator, who has been living in Egypt for thirteen years. His first book published in Egypt and entirely written in Egyptian dialect has achieved resounding success and a second edition of it has been published in November of the same year. Cartolano describes “his” Egypt, as if he were taking pictures of the people that surround him, i.e. mostly Egyptians of the lower classes. In this paper I will try to explain the reasons why an Italian author writing in Egyptian dialect achieved such a success within Egyptian contemporary literature, through a comparative analysis with Arabic mother tongue authors writing in Italian.
