AUGUST 13, 2025 — Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim — one of the great literary innovators of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries — died today, the Egyptian Ministry of Culture announced. He was eighty-eight.
Born in Cairo in 1937, Ibrahim chronicled the Cairo of his youth — and a family seemingly much like his — in his tender, heart-bending 2007 novel Stealth, translated to English by Hosam Aboul-ela. But Ibrahim was better known for his reclusiveness, his criticism of successive Egyptian and Western governments, and for the bold, stark criticism of his early novella That Smell (tr. Robyn Creswell), composed after a five-year stint in prison, and novels such as his Zaat (tr. Anthony Calderbank), which married this stripped-down critical eye with a wide, collage-like embrace of world news and events. The latter was turned into a popular TV series.
As a student in the early 1950s, Ibrahim studied law at Cairo University and was imprisoned in 1959 for his organizing activities. His Notes from Prison, published in Creswell’s translation, detail those experiences, as well as his thoughts about literature.
Much has been written about Ibrahim (for instance, Rebel with a Pen, ed. Paul Starkey), and this will be brief, but any glimpse of his life would be remiss not to mention the stir he caused in October 2003 when he publicly refused the LE100,000 Arabic Novel award offered to him by the Egyptian Supreme Council for Culture, giving a short speech in which he stated that the award was being given by a “government that does not have the credibility to grant it.”
The awards ceremony came at the end of a conference that had been dedicated to Edward Said, who had died the previous month. The chair of the prize, Tayeb Salih, called Ibrahim a “guardian of the sacred temple of Art,” going on to describe him (as per Rebel with a Pen), “describing him as an ascetic and as a champion of justice and truth who had dedicated his life to writing.” The description continues:
Sonallah Ibrahim’s speech in reply began in a fairly conventional way, with mention of other writers he considered more deserving of the award, but as it went on, became more passionate and angry, as he embarked on a ‘eulogy’ of the Arab world that ‘once upon a time was Arab’: he complained that ‘At this very moment Israeli forces continue to occupy what remains of Palestinian land (. . .) executing, with concise precision and method, a genocide against the Palestinian people (. . .) But the Arab capitals continue to receive Israeli leaders with open arms . . .’ and declared that ‘We have no theatre, no cinema, no research, no education. We only have festivals and conferences and a trunkful of lies.’ Concluding his speech, the author announced ‘I publicly decline the prize because it is awarded by a government that, in my opinion, lacks the credibility of bestowing it’, before leaving the hall with his wife.
Among other great works are Ibrahim’s Warda (2000, translated by Hosam Aboul-ela 2021), a reading not just of the the politics of the 1990s and Oman’s 1960s Dhofar Revolution through the eyes of a young woman revolutionary, but also the wide, global sweep of the ideas and events of the 1960s. Many more of Ibrahim’s works are available in translation, including The Committee (tr. Denys Johnson-Davies), The Turban and the Hat (tr. Bruce Fudge), Ice (tr. Margaret Litvin),
We will have more to look back at the work of Sonallah Ibrahim in the days and weeks to come.