Late Writer Yahya Haqqi was portrayed with Hologram Technology at the Cairo International Book Fair 2022

on Feb 02, 2022

Hologram Technology was prominently used in a series of events of the Cairo International Book Fair 2022. It was used to project Late Writer Yahya Haqqi who was chosen to be the character of the exhibition of this year.

Haqqi’s depiction gathered a massive amount of fans and thus, gained a great turnout. His fans had the opportunity to speak with him through a series of ten questions. People clustered around a white platform with a screen with shiny laser beams on, then Haqqi appeared to answer a set of questions that he was asked in a manner of dialogue. Among the questions asked by everyone, few of the questions were like: “Are Yahya Haqqi’s writing more fun, even the critical ones?” followed by “What makes writer Yahya Haqqi laugh?” and “Is there humorous literature in Egypt?”

He was also questioned: “Why were foreign researchers fascinated about ‘Qandil Umm Hashem‘s novel?’ To which generation do you belong? Is slang a dialect or a language?” and then “In your book ‘Come with me to Concert’, you talked about caricature literature and the musical accompaniment, how did you combine these two arts in one book? What is the topic that you haven’t written about yet? What bothers you about being called a doctor? Don’t you think that your many writings and your leading of the contemporary Egyptian short story are greater than any effort made for a Ph.D.?

After the questions were selected and pressed, the audience were able to hear pre-recorded answers from the hologram of Yahya Haqqi, as if they were having a real conversation in person. It was fascinating and amazed a lot of people.

Haqqi was an Egyptian writer and novelist, studied Law from Cairo University. He spent his life in the civil service and worked in the Egyptian diplomatic corps. He was also an advisor to the Egyptian National Library and Archives.

During his career, he published four short story collections along with many articles, and some of his most famous novels were “al-Bostaji” (The Postman), “Sareq al-Kohl” (The Kohl Thief), “Qandil Umm Hashem” (The Lamp of Umm Hashem).