In this beautiful art book, award-winning American photographer Ann Parker records and celebrates life as it passes along a road through a typical village in the Egyptian Nile Delta in the early twenty-first century. But her photographs are not mere documents of a specific time and place; they transcend both as she captures timeless moments in an eternal world and presents us with a potentially infinite and hauntingly memorable pageant of living tableaux, silhouetted against the late afternoon sky. Like spectators seated in a theater, we watch the comings and goings of the village's people, animals, and vehicles on the road in front of us.
Introducing the photographs are extracts from the autobiographical reflections of the poet Muhammad Afifi Matar, who was born and grew up in a small Delta village very like the one pictured by Ann Parker. His recollections of a rural Egyptian childhood and adolescence are sometimes warming, sometimes chilling, but always insightful and thought-provoking.

Haunting and lyrical photographs of the theater of rural Egyptian life

About the Author

Ann Parker is an award-winning photographer, whose latest book is Twilight Visions in Egypt's Nile Delta (AUC Press, 2008). She collaborated with writer Avon Neal, who specialized in international folk art topics, on several books.

Muhammad Afifi Matar was born in the Nile Delta village of Ramlat al-Anjab in 1935. Widely recognized as one of Egypt's leading poets, he was awarded the prestigious Oweiss Prize in 1999.

Book Information
ISBN 9789774161865
Author Ann Parker
Format Hardback
Page Count 136
Imprint The American University in Cairo Press
Publisher The American University in Cairo Press
Weight(grams) 966g