Our Story
Founded in 2009, BEBA Editions is a small but brave publishing house based in Cairo, Egypt. BEBA is the acronym of the Arabic name Baad el Bahr, meaning ‘beyond the sea’. The name itself suggests our mission of introducing to the Egyptian audience contemporary Italian authors in an attractive tiny format books with covers designed by contemporary Arab artists.
Our flagship is the collection of short stories SEHAM (Arabic for ‘arrows’). The title hints at the capacity of the texts to pe*****te with intelligence and courage both the tackled issues and the mind of the reader, where an unforgettable mark is left.
The texts chosen are aimed to catch the attention of the reader and invite him to think further. They scrutinize the various and deepest human layers, and deal with fundamental moral and existential issues while revealing controversial aspects of a continuous social turmoil, where history is an unlimited source of teaching.
Nowadays BEBA is the only independent Egyptian publishing house engaged in a project of regular translation and diffusion of the Italian literature, often preferring texts overlooked by the mainstream commercial logic. Its mission works for enlarging the field to other languages in the Mediterranean basin and enduring the fruitful co-edition effort.
Since 2012 BEBA has paved the way to the publications of art and artist books, assuming a leading role within a rather missing sector, as the history of modern art itself is extremely young in the country.
In 2016 BEBA Editions will launch a new series devoted to the translation of essays on contemporary philosophy and schools of thought.
BEBA Editions is also planning to open an e-book section in order to reach the Arabic readers all over the world.
Last but not least, BEBA Editions offers a service of peer review about authors of novels and essays from the Arab world and especially from Egypt, intended in particular at the creation of long term publishing plan.
