📚 If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, Cairo Circles, A Pure Heart, Beer in the Snooker Club, The Map of Love. All world-class works of fiction by Egyptian authors, centering Egyptian characters, taking place in the streets, nooks, and crannies of Om El Donia. Why were none of them published in Egypt?

We’ve long been storytellers: Egyptian authors have paved the way over the decades (and centuries) for the region’s literary evolution. In 1988, Naguib Mahfouz became the first (and only) Arabic-language author to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Of the 28 laureates of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature since its inauguration, nearly half — 13 — have been Egyptian. The very first International Prize for Arabic Fiction, the Arab world’s most prestigious literary award, went to Egyptian author Bahaa Taher. Cairo hosts the world’s largest book fair by attendance, and Egyptian publishers print the most Arabic-language books worldwide.

Why then, in a country that has built the Arab world’s literary infrastructure from the ground up, are original English works so hard to find? Why do English-speaking Egyptian authors choose to publish beyond Om El Donia’s borders?

The books that got away

The titles in our opening paragraph share more than Egyptian authorship. If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, Noor Naga’s debut novel, was published by Graywolf Press in the United States. Beer in the Snooker Club, Waguih Ghali’s 1964 classic, came out through André Deutsch in London. Cairo Circles and The Map of Love followed similar paths — celebrated internationally, but born, metaphorically speaking, somewhere else.

Several of these authors were writing from the diaspora. Others were chasing what any ambitious writer chases: the widest possible readership, the most established editorial infrastructure, the best shot at international reviews and prize longlists. Publishing in New York or London isn’t a betrayal of Egypt as much as it’s a smart move.

“If I’m an Egyptian writing in English, am I really writing for Egyptians?” Amina Zaineldine, an aspiring Egyptian author currently working on her manuscript, puts it plainly. “At least, it would be for a relatively smaller demographic,” Zaineldine tells EnterpriseAM. Her plan, like that of many Egyptian authors writing in English, is to pursue international publishers — not because local publishers have failed her, but because she doesn’t see them as a realistic option in the first place. “Publishers abroad are more far-reaching. If I publish in Egypt, I would only be talking to a tiny demographic at home.”

Even if a locally-published English book exists, she might not find it: “I don't feel like there’s a ton of marketing for English-language books published locally,” she says. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

… But why write in English?

The decision to write in English, for an Egyptian author, isn’t just a publishing choice. “Speaking [and writing] in English carries a guilt mechanism embedded into it,” writing retreat community Papertrails founder Menna Emad Abdelrahman tells EnterpriseAM. As Egyptians and Arabs, she says, there is always that conflict — do I write in Arabic or in English? The guilt, she argues, is specific to Arabic: it is a language bound up with colonialism and erasure in a way that makes choosing another tongue feel like a concession.

And yet, she says, English is also a bridge. “When I think of Afghanistan, I think of Khaled Hosseini and The Kite Runner rather than the news,” she says. “Fiction has such a strong power to reformulate the images we carry of places and peoples.” For Egyptian authors writing in English, the language that carries guilt also carries possibility — the chance to tell Egyptian stories to a world that might otherwise only encounter Egypt through headlines.

There are indeed readers waiting

The instinct to look abroad assumes that there’s no market for English-language books in Egypt. The evidence says otherwise. Walk into any Diwan branch, Reader’s Corner, or Bibliothek, and the English-language shelves are full and growing. Egyptian BookTokers and book bloggers have built real audiences, mostly reviewing titles in English.

A 2024 market report found that the English-language segment held the largest revenue share of Egypt’s book market by language — larger than Arabic — driven primarily by academic titles but pointing to a readership that exists and is paying. Fiction, the same report notes, is projected to be the fastest-growing genre segment through 2030.

The demand is there. What’s missing is the supply of original Egyptian voices writing into it.

The publishers

Egypt does have English-language publishers. Beyond AUC Press and Diwan, a handful of smaller houses technically accept English manuscripts — but anyone who has seen the output knows the difference between accepting and publishing well. Books produced without editorial infrastructure show it: formatting errors, uncorrected typos, no distribution to speak of. The English-language Egyptian author exists. The industry capable of serving them at scale, largely, does not.

That leaves two serious players. Diwan Publishing, which launched its publishing arm in 2021, has begun moving into English-language original fiction. And AUC Press — founded in 1960, the largest English-language publisher in Egypt and arguably the region — has been doing it, in its way, for decades.

Hoopoe, AUC Press’ fiction imprint, publishes four books a year — two per season — a mix of Arabic literature in translation and original English-language work, such as Syrian-American author Rania Hanna’s novel, The Jinn Daughter, AUC Press Senior Acquisitions Editor Nadine El Hadi tells EnterpriseAM. The imprint accepts unsolicited manuscripts and does not require authors to be agented. But four books a year, for a region of hundreds of mns of people, is a slim pipeline.

“It's actually not a huge number of books per year when you think about the creative output of Egypt or of the region,” El Hadi acknowledges. “There’s a huge pool to choose from.” There’s no policy to not publish Egyptians writing in English, El Hadi tells us. “We’re very much open to that if and when the right project comes along.” Hoopoe’s criteria aren’t nationality or language — it’s stories from the Middle East, published in English, aimed at a reader base that stretches from Cairo to New York.

What Hoopoe looks for: literary fiction, novels only, with international appeal. Science fiction, horror, romance — genres with their own devoted readerships — fall outside its scope. “If somebody comes to us with a science fiction manuscript, we don’t have the reach in that area,” El Hadi says.

The gaps

The authors are here. The readers exist. Two publishers are operating to the best of their abilities. And yet the ecosystem that would connect all three — the mid-tier publishers, the genre houses, the literary agents working the Cairo-to-World pipeline — is nearly absent.

El Hadi is optimistic about the future, in principle. “I don’t see why there is not more room in the market for more publishing houses and for more expansion into this area. This is a growing rather than a shrinking market,” she says.

There remains another problem. Egypt’s book market, even if in its Arabic-dominant form, operates largely blind, as we had previously reported. Our book industry runs without comprehensive sales databases, without reliable reader data, and without the kind of publishing infrastructure that allows London or New York houses to plan a book’s journey a year in advance. Any expansion into English-language original fiction would be a leap made with even less information — into a smaller audience, at higher production costs, with no guaranteed returns that would justify the risk.

So, the question is: Who’s going to build the missing infrastructure? And who’s going to take that risk? That remains open.