Living characters from songs, by: Mohamed Al-Mansi Qandil

Mohammed Al-Mansi Qandil presents to us in this enjoyable book selected characters from the famous encyclopedia of Abi Faraj Al-Asfahani "Al-Aghani". In these pages, the men of authority step back slightly to make way for the poets... the knights lower their swords until the whisper of lovers rises... the clashing of swords stops so that the rhythm of melody and singing continues... tortured lovers live between the heat of meeting and the bitterness of separation, and when they hear the call of the caravans, they breathe their last... Mohammed Al-Mansi Qandil presents to us in his sweet style a select group of people, raised by their mental effort above their ordinary class, with a seed of restless ambition inside them, swinging between the dreams they inscribe in the words of poems, and the unforgiving desert traditions... people who openly expressed feelings of intense love, explicit desire, and the longing for life, reintroducing us to the beauty of the intimacy of bygone nights. And the characters of "Al-Aghani" — whether realistic or fictional — are a mixture of love, madness, and desire, soaring high before their orbit of illusion brings them down... and perhaps this is one of the secrets of the enjoyment of this magnificent book. Number of pages: 448