Novel
I Do Not Sleep
لا أنام
Ihsan Abdel Quddous · 1956
Synopsis
Nadia Lotfi, twenty-one, writes to a certain Ihsan, whom she met in Alexandria and in Cairo, the long letter in which she tells of her youth. Her parents divorced and she grew up with a father whom she adored. Back from boarding school at sixteen, she finds him involved with Safia, whom he has married according to ArabLit, and sets about undoing this union: she invents an infidelity on her stepmother's part, according to The Millions, then pushes another woman towards her father. She herself falls in love with a man older than she is.
Context
The novel appeared in 1956 from Dar al-Qalam. It takes the form of a letter from the heroine to a correspondent named Ihsan, in accessible language aimed at young readers, according to ArabLit. The cinema drew from it, as early as 1957, Sleepless, with Faten Hamama and Omar Sharif, a film selected in 1996 among the one hundred and fifty best productions of Egyptian cinema. Jonathan Smolin translated it into English in 2021, and judged it “shocking” that the author remains more or less unknown outside the Arab world.
Who it is for
An epistolary novel, easy to read; a recent English version exists, no French translation found.
Prizes and reception
One of the best-known novels of an author whose forty-nine books were adapted for the cinema.
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