Stealth (Egypt)
ISBN: 9781906300098 Price: £7.99 Not yet released
By Sonallah Ibrahim
Translated by Hosam Aboul-Ela
AN ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD boy growing up in Cairo describes his day-to-day existence living with his aged father.
The young narrator glides through life as a surreptitious observer of the adult condition - listening in on conversations he is not supposed to hear, watching behaviour he is not supposed to see, witnessing longings he is not supposed to understand.
By sneaking about in his own apartment and peeking at others from behind locked gates, the child becomes attuned to the moods, habits and silent yearnings of the adults around him. He sees and overhears them flirting, copulating, bathing, menstruating, depilating, cooking, cleaning, napping and performing life’s many daily rituals.
Stealth is an intimate, offbeat, yet strangely affecting Bildungsroman in which Sonallah Ibrahim mines his own unconventional upbringing to adopt a child’s-eye - and intensely personal - view of Egypt at a time of political turmoil. Growing opposition to King Farouq, the Zionist control of Palestine and political infighting form the backdrop to the novel.
Ibrahim explores through Stealth yearning in its many forms: for maternal love, lost youth, simple creature comforts. Translated by Hosam Aboul-Ela, it will be published by Aflame Books in November 2009.
Sonallah Ibrahim is one of Egypt’s greatest living writers.
Hosam Aboul-Ela is an associate professor of literature at the University of Houston in Texas.
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“Ibrahim has adopted a hallowed genre but given it a creative twist, writing a very quirky, intimate, offbeat, yet strangely affecting Bildungsroman. Unlike the conventional form, however, his Bildungsroman is as concerned with old age as it with youth.” - Baheyya blog