Ahmed Mourad
Ahmed Mourad ( Arabic أحمد مراد, DMG Aḥmad Murād , born February 14, 1978 ) is an Egyptian writer, former filmmaker and photographer .
Life
Ahmed Mourad was so obsessively interested in film and photography in his youth that he almost missed his high school graduation and had to repeat it. He then successfully studied at the Cairo film school The High Institute for Cinema . His graduation films Alhaúmon , And On The Seventh Day and The Three Papers have been shown at European festivals. However, since the opportunity arose to occupy a well-paid job as a permanent personal photographer for the then Egyptian head of state Hosni Mubarak , he earned his family's livelihood with it until the overthrow. In his spare time, he began to write a thriller about what corruption he saw in the country .
His first novel Vertigo (2007) was a bestseller in Egypt, which was consequently adapted as a television series in 2012, defused from social criticism. It has also been translated into English, French and Italian. Such suspense novels from one's own society were not yet very widespread in the Arabic-speaking world. As one of the few examples of precursors, Mourad named Nagib Mahfuz and his novel The Thief and the Dogs . But at the same time he made it clear in the interview that he was not interested in the typical components of a detective novel, the Whodunnit and the hunt for clues.
The next novel was again a thriller , turābu l-mās (Diamond Dust) (2010), was translated into English and Italian and was the first to be available in German. In 2014 it was published under the title Diamantenstaub by Lenos Verlag , Basel . By then he had his third novel, Al-Feel al-Azraq (The Blue Elephant). (2012) published, which was even more successful in Egypt than its predecessor. The thriller about the psychotherapist Yehia was filmed for the cinema in 2014 by director Marwan Hamed . His fourth novel was called 1919 (2014).
In January 2015 it became known that Ahmed Mourad could be won as a “cultural ambassador” for the book cafés project of the German-Egyptian partnership between the Goethe-Institut Cairo and the NGO Sefsafa Culture, which is financed by the German Foreign Office .
Ahmed Mourad is married and lives in Cairo.
Works in German
- Diamond dust. Thriller. From the Arabic by Christine Battermann. Lenos Verlag , Basel 2014, ISBN 978-3-85787-452-9 .
- Vertigo. Thriller. From the Arabic by Christine Battermann. Lenos Verlag, Basel 2016, ISBN 978-3-85787-463-5 .
- Blue elephant. Thriller from Egypt . From the Arabic by Christine Battermann. Lenos Verlag, Basel 2018, ISBN 978-3-85787-486-4
Web links
- Literature by and about Ahmed Mourad in the catalog of the German National Library
- Ahmed Mourad in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Egypt's bestselling authors: Ahmed Mourad , Goethe-Institut Cairo, July 2013
Individual evidence
- ^ By day, I shot my boss Hosni Mubarak. By night, I dream of dictator's downfall. Interview on the occasion of the publication of Vertigo. In: The Guardian. November 13, 2011, accessed February 11, 2015.
- ↑ The master of the Arabic thriller. ( Memento from February 12, 2015 in the web archive archive.today ) WDR5 on Ahmed Mourad, accessed February 11, 2015.
- ↑ Ahmed Mourad: 'I Am a Tough Reader'. Interview for arablit.org of April 24, 2014, accessed February 11, 2015.
- ↑ Dina Netz: Family saga: An Egyptian moral picture. Review of Ahmed Mourad: Diamond Dust In: Deutschlandradio Kultur. November 7, 2014, accessed February 11, 2015.
- ↑ German Embassy Cairo: Start of the pilot project “Book Café” ( Memento from February 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mourad, Ahmed Mourad |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Murād, Aḥmad; Murad, Ahmed |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Egyptian thriller writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 14, 1978 |