A Nose and Three Eyes
A Novel
Ihsan Abdel Kouddous author Jonathan Smolin translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:American University in Cairo Press
Published:4th Jun '24
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Written by iconic Egyptian novelist Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, this classic of love, desire, and family breakdown smashed through taboos when first published in Arabic and continues to captivate audiences today
It is 1950s Cairo and 16-year-old Amina is engaged to a much older man. Despite all the excitement of the wedding preparations, Amina is not looking forward to her nuptials. And it is not because of the age gap or because of the fact that she does not love, or even really know, her fiancé. No, it is because she is involved with another man.
This other man is Dr Hashim Abdel-Latif, and while he is Amina’s first love, she is certainly not his. Also many years her senior, Hashim is well-known in polite circles for his adventures with women. A Nose and Three Eyes tells the story of Amina’s love affair with Hashim, and that of two other young women: Nagwa and Rihab.
A Nose and Three Eyes is a story of female desire and sexual awakening, of love and infatuation, and of exploitation and despair. It quietly critiques the strictures put upon women by conservative social norms and expectations, while a subtle undercurrent of political censure was carefully aimed at the then Nasser regime. As such, it was both deeply controversial and wildly popular when first published in the 1960s. Still a household name, this novel, and its author, have stood the test of time and remain relevant and highly readable today.
”Breaking bourgeois taboos. . . . The Cairo of the 1950s and ’60s described in A Nose and Three Eyes is much different from the Cairo of 2024, but this novel is still relevant. It provides psychological insights into the struggles Egyptian women face in the discovery of their sexuality in Cairo society, which still maintains more traditional norms than the West.” —World Literature Today
"The novel is filled with the yearning and poor choices of young love under oppressive social expectations, where the risks taken by men are paid for by the women in their lives. The translation by Jonathon Smolin is propulsive and flowing. Spanning the personal and the political, moving from Cairo to Suez to Beirut, this is an epic and enthralling romantic novel."—The Irish Times
"Noteworthy"—Daily Kos
PRAISE FOR I DO NOT SLEEP:
"[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
"Fresh, unpretentious and irresistibly cinematic"—ArabLit
"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
PRAISE FOR IHSAN ABDEL KOUDDOUS:
"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
"Kouddous . . .wrote fiction about the Arab world way ahead of its time, pared down and powerful."— LitHub
"What sets Ihsan Abdel Kouddous apart is his ability to combine, on the page, the different overlapping threads of politics and society."—Al-Shorouk
ISBN: 9781649033598
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
536 pages