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House of the Wolf

An Egyptian Novel

Ezzat El Kamhawi author Nancy Roberts translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:The American University in Cairo Press

Published:4th Apr '12

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

House of the Wolf cover

A sweeping saga of generations of a rural Egyptian family and the history of the wider Egypt that affects their lives. Winner of the 2012 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature

This novel is set in an idyllic Egyptian village from the time it was discovered by Muhammad Ali's mission in the early nineteenth century to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, movingly intertwining events on the world scene with the life dramas of its protagonists. The story opens with the pivotal character, Mubarka al-Fuli, now a grandmother and matriarch, wanting to dictate a letter to God for her grandson to send to the Almighty by email. We are then ushered back in time to Mubarka's fiery adolescence and her painfully aborted romance with Muntasir, son of the village's deceased but legendary strongman. The shifting fortunes of the al-Deeb clan affect every aspect of its members' lives, from their sexual vulnerabilities to the grief of loss, the uncertainties of a changing world, and the heartaches born of betrayal, and love unfulfilled.

"In this beautifully crafted novel, there are luminous moments where history literally arrives at a village swept by more than a century of colonial rule, revolutions, and wars. In its evocation of imagined history and fictive events, the novel ... invites us to reflect on the boundaries that separate the village from modernity, fiction from history, and art from life."-Tahia Abdel Nasser, Mahfouz Medal Award Committee

ISBN: 9789774166204

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 403g

280 pages