Sonallah Ibrahim Livres

Sonallah Ibrahim's 2000 masterpiece offers readers a view of twentieth-century world events through the diary pages of his titular character.

November, 1980: An Egyptian writer has chosen the wrong time to come to Beirut in search of a publisher for his controversial book. Men with machine guns are on every street corner. When the writer meets an old friend from his revolutionary student days, he is introduced to two fascinating women: idealistic film-maker Antoinette and Lamia, the seductive wife of his would-be publisher. His attentions inevitably turn towards the two women, but the background rumble of strife and struggle becomes increasingly hard to ignore.Based on the author's real-life experience of the civil war in Lebanon, Beirut, Beirut is an exploration of how, even in the midst of chaos and violence, universals such as love, desire and yearning are still always our guiding forces.

A novel of the invasion and occupation of Egypt by Napoleonic France as seen through the eyes of a young Egyptian. The Napoleonic-era French invasion and occupation of Egypt are often seen as the Arab world's first encounter with the military and technological prowess of the West--and it came as a terrible shock. The Turban and the Hat tells the story of those three tumultuous years from the perspective of a young Egyptian living in late-eighteenth-century Cairo. Knowing some French, he works as a translator for the occupiers. He meets their scientists and artists, has an affair with Bonaparte's mistress, and accompanies the disastrous campaign to take Syria, where he witnesses the ravages of the plague and the horrific barbarism of war. He is astonished by the invaders' lies and propaganda, but he finds that much of what he thought he knew about his fellow Egyptians was also an illusion. Convincing in its history but rich in themes that resonate today, The Turban and the Hat is a story of resistance, but also of collaboration, cooperation, and corruption. Sonallah Ibrahim, one of Egypt's foremost novelists, gives us a marvelous account of the Western occupation of an Arab land, one that will resonate with contemporary readers. His portrayal of this tragic--and at times comic--"clash of civilizations" is never didactic, even as it reminds us that so many lessons of history go unlearned.

Set against the backdrop of Egypt's pre-revolutionary turmoil, the narrative follows an eleven-year-old boy grappling with his coming of age. His journey is marked by a struggle for independence from his aging father and the emotional void left by his mother’s absence. Through vivid memories and candid observations, he navigates a Cairo teeming with movie stars, royalty, and revolutionaries, capturing the complexities of a decaying city and the boy's attempts to understand the adult world around him.

"One of the most influential Arabic novels of recent times, That Smell is Sonallah Ibrahim's modernist masterpiece. Composed in the wake of a five-year prison sentence, the semi-autobiographical story follows a recently released political prisoner as he wanders through Cairo, adrift in his native city. Published in 1966, the novel was immediately banned. For this edition, the translator Robyn Creswell has also included an annotated selection of Notes from Prison culled from Ibrahim's prison diary -- a personal archive comprising hundreds of handwritten notes scribbled on Bafra-brand cigarette papers. These writings shed unexpected light on Ibrahim's groundbreaking novel."--Publisher's website.