Why Gazan authors are moving to Egypt

Egypt remains the No. 1 destination for Arab authors in general, and Gazan authors in particular, due to its cultural and scientific stature.
A man browses in a bookshop in downtown Cairo October 13, 2010. Poking fun at everything from the president's almost 30-year rule to the capital's frenetic traffic, satirical books are filling more shelf space in Egypt's bookshops and reflecting the frustrations of a young generation. Limited outlets for political expression, state crackdowns on organized dissent and a growing wealth gap in the Arab world's most populous state are fuelling demand for such literary satire, literary critics say. Picture taken
A man browses in a bookshop in downtown Cairo, Oct. 13, 2010. - REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
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Mohammed Othman
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CAIRO — Mahmoud Ramadan is a young novelist who left the Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City in 2008. Looking for a place to publish his writings, he wound up in Egypt. He settled there and has so far published three novels about the situation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Al-Monitor met with Ramadan in his bookstore, which he opened in early 2016, in the Egyptian 6th of October City. He said he found it best to leave Gaza in 2008 after being imprisoned twice by Hamas because of his views and writings that go against the Hamas movement and its rule.

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