Translator Ibrahim Fawzy curates this special section on beloved and award-winning Egyptian novelist Hamdi Abu Golayyel, chronicler of Egypt’s dispossessed, and scribe of the poetry and culture of the Bedouin.
“I’m a writer without a cause; I don’t resist injustice or oppression for example, and I believe that it’s not the burden of the novel, but that the novel is supposed to delight and entertain. Sometimes, though, I feel responsible for the Bedouins, since if I hadn’t written about them—including myself—we would have remained in the shadows.”
Ibrahim Sayed Fawzy asked Egyptian author Hamdi Abu Golayyel for a playlist of Bedouin songs that readers can listen to as they devour The Men Who Swallowed the Sun.
Judges today announced joint winners of the 2022 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation: the late Humphrey Davies, for his translation of Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s The Men Who Swallowed the Sun and Robin Moger, for his translation of Mohamed Kheir’s Slipping.
Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s Men Who Swallowed the Sun, translated by the late Humphrey Davies, is the focus of the most recent episode of the BULAQ podcast: “Stealing, Drug-dealing, and the Epic of Egyptian Migration.”
Yesterday’s Guardian carried an extraordinarily upbeat portrait of Cairo’s book world from Cairo-based Jack Shenker. And Author Hamdi abu Golayyel (of The Laborer, or, as it’s titled in English A […]
