Islam Issa

speaker

96 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 13 Jul

Islam Issa’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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A Good Read · Joanne Harris and Islam Issa · 13 Jul 2026 podcast

What a catastrophe.

And something about, to me, moderation or the middle ground and how unattractive that is to people.

He's described sometimes as neither man nor woman.

There's a quote where he's neither mad nor sane, like the rest of us, like we're all either mad or sane.

And it's somehow problematic to have a middle ground.

So I think there are themes that sort of transpire as it goes along.

Certainly Abrahamic.

For one, Isis, the single mother of Horus, as an example, or Seth killing his brother Osiris, which is Cain and Abel.

maybe Hamlet and so on.

So it's not a surprise, and I think that's one of the things that makes reading about Egyptian culture, when written by Egyptians, so important, is that to me that Abrahamic link made complete sense.

And I think people interested in Egypt should be seeking out work by Egyptians because it's one of those universalized cultures that so many people want to write about or make movies about or theater.

Or there are so many history programs about Egypt that don't have any Egyptian historians.

Yeah.

And so there's something really important about remembering that this isn't just a story to Egyptians.

This is actually part of their culture.

And I think what Mahfouz is able to do is capture that cultural knowledge and actually, to me, cultural memory.

One of my immediate thoughts was, I really cannot imagine writing about my parents in such a way.

So there is something seemingly cathartic for Roy writing this.

For so many years, I taught The God of Small Things, and I was quite excited to understand something about Roy's background, about her mother.

So I wanted even more about her mother and a bit less about Roy herself as I was reading it, and I felt some of the most heartfelt moments were actually about herself, not necessarily about her mother.

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