My dear brother: correspondences Hussein and Jalal Amin 1

This book is rare and exceptional! Fortunately for us, the two great thinkers Hussein and Jallal Amin, the sons of the great writer Ahmed Amin, kept their exchanged letters from when they were in their twenties until their sixties. Their letters recorded what those years witnessed in terms of changes in their personalities and developments in their ideas. This enjoyable part contains the correspondence of Hussein and Jallal in the 1950s, which represented a very important stage for them, as they lived between Egypt, England, and Canada, opening up to a wide world full of different cultures and civilizations. They managed to form their personalities with a unique cultural formation and benefited from many experiences and pleasures. Although their stays in Cairo rarely intersected, their correspondence continued, and their exchanged letters crossed oceans, full of feelings, ideas, questions, and deep philosophical dialogues. Being brothers close in age, their letters were characterized by a great deal of honesty and sincerity. Undoubtedly, the influence of that initial stage on their ideas remained extended until their last years. Anyone who reads their subsequent cultural production cannot but return to that stage of their lives and attribute the seeds of their ideas to it. They will be able to understand the circumstances that led to the emergence of those ideas and trace their stages of development and growth. This book offers a rare glimpse into the youth of two great figures in our Arab culture and against the backdrop of years that shaped an entire era. About the author: Hussein Ahmed Amin was born in Cairo in 1932. He is the son of the writer, thinker, and pioneer of Islamic enlightenment Dr. Ahmed Amin, and the brother of the economist thinker Dr. Jallal Amin. He graduated from the Faculty of Law, Cairo University, in 1953, then studied English Literature at the University of London. He worked as a lawyer, then as a broadcaster at the Egyptian Radio, and later as a broadcaster in the Arabic section of the BBC. He joined the Egyptian diplomatic corps and advanced through various positions until he became an ambassador. During his work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was appointed as a technical advisor to the Minister of Culture, and also served as Vice Director of the United Nations Information Center in Cairo. The Federal Republic of Germany awarded him the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit in 1983. He was fluent in English, French, Russian, German, and Portuguese. Hussein Ahmed Amin passed away in 2014. He has many articles, research papers, radio plays, translations, and books, most notably *The Sad Muslim’s Guide to the Demands of Conduct in the 20th Century*, which won the Best Book Award at the Cairo International Book Fair in 1984, and was translated into French and English. He also authored *In the House of Ahmed Amin*, *And He Told a Tale*, *From Old Arab Literature*, and the play *The Imam*. Jallal Amin (1935–2018) was an Egyptian economist and thinker. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at Cairo University in 1955 and completed his PhD at the London School of Economics. He taught economics at the Faculty of Law at Ain Shams University between 1965 and 1974, then worked as an economic advisor to the Kuwait Fund for Development until 1978, after which he moved to California as a visiting professor of economics at his university for two years. Since 1979, he has held the position of Professor of Economics at the American University in Cairo. Author: Hussein Ahmed Amin - Kamal Salah Amin Number of pages: 344 To request Jallal Amin’s other works: 1/ What Life Taught Me 2/ Written on the Forehead — Tales on the Margins of the Biography 3/ What Happened to Culture in Egypt 4/ The Nectar of Life 5/ My Dear Brother 6/ My Dear Brother, Part Two