I Do Not Sleep
A Novel
Ihsan Abdel Kouddous author Jonathan Smolin translator
Format:Hardback
Publisher:American University in Cairo Press
Published:5th Oct '21
Should be back in stock very soon
This hardback is available in another edition too:
- Paperback£14.99(9781649030986)
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A story of betrayal, desire, and family drama, written by a giant of Egyptian popular fiction who shocked readers in the 1950s when this Lolita-esque novel first appeared and whose work has never before been available in English
Sixteen-year-old Nadia had been raised by her father, after her parents divorced when she was only a baby. Indulged and petulant, she remained the only female in her father’s life. But when she returns from boarding school to find that he has remarried without her knowledge, she conspires to restore her rightful place, creating misery, confusion, and a flood of unexpected consequences in her wake.
Written as a letter, a confession, by now twenty-one-year old Nadia, Ihsan Abdel Kouddous’s classic novel of revenge and betrayal challenges patriarchal norms with its strong female characters and brazen sexuality, and continues to speak to the complex human condition. It dives into middle-class life, and lays bare the repressed desires, seething jealousies, and complicated dramas of family.
Abdel Kouddous’s masterpiece I Do Not Sleep was adapted into a classic of Egyptian cinema in 1957, and its publication for the first time in English is an international publishing event.
"[One] of the best new works from around the world"—The Irish Times
"This 1950s Egyptian epistolary novel is told by a young woman looking back on the misery, patriarchy and middle-class life that surrounded her upon her return from boarding school."—New York Times Book Review
"Kouddous . . .wrote fiction about the Arab world way ahead of its time, pared down and powerful."—LitHub
"Fresh, unpretentious and irresistibly cinematic"—ArabLit
"A must-read book set in Cairo"—Electric Literature
"A classic of Egyptian Literature. It's great that books like this are being published and that Ihsan Abdel Kouddous' work is available to the English reader in such a good translation."—Raphael Cormack, author of Midnight in Cairo
"Ihsan Abdel Kouddous was a great novelist, a pioneer journalist, and a progressive activist who long fought for women’s rights and secular democratic values."—Alaa Al Aswany, author of The Yacoubian Building
"Abdel Kouddous enriched Egyptian literature and cinema with everlasting works"—Egypt Today
“Ihsan is an artist”—Tawfik al-Hakim, author of Return of the Spirit
“Abdel Kouddous enriched the world of Arab culture.”—Sky News Arabia
“What sets Ihsan Abdel Kouddous apart is his ability to combine, on the page, the different overlapping threads of politics and society.”—Al-Shorouk
“The novel I Do Not Sleep represents a turning point in Ihsan Abdel Kouddous’s narratorial style.”—Hafriyat
ISBN: 9781649031341
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
364 pages