Description
A recently released political prisoner drifts through Cairo under the pressure of house arrest, trying—and failing—to turn his ordeal into writing as he smokes, watches the street from the margins, revisits old loves, and confronts a rapidly changing consumer Egypt. Blending semi-autobiographical immediacy with modernist experimentation, this influential novel explores memory, surveillance, and the uneasy distance between lived trauma and the stories we tell afterward. In this edition, Robyn Creswell pairs the novel with an annotated selection of Sonallah Ibrahim’s prison diaries, Notes from Prison—handwritten fragments smuggled out on cigarette papers that reveal the raw motives and craft behind the book’s breakthrough. An accompanying essay on the novel’s writing and reception deepens the reader’s sense of how censorship, exile, and political power shape literature itself.
Available Editions
paperback
New Directions
Published Jan 1, 2013
121 pages
ISBN: 9780811220620
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Details
First Published
2013
Language
eng
Translation
From: ara
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for That Smell and Notes from Prison by Sonallah Ibrahim.