Sonallah Ibrahim

Egyptian novelist and short story writer Sonallah Ibrahim, one of the Sixties Generation, wrote openly leftist fiction that often sets newspaper excerpts beside its story. His first book, That Smell, draws on his own imprisonment in the 1960s and follows a recently released prisoner drifting through Cairo under house arrest; he also wrote The Committee and Warda. In 2003 he turned down a literary award worth £E100,000 from Egypt's Ministry of Culture, in keeping with his politics. Ibrahim died in August 2025.