Novel
Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery
خالتي صفية والدير
Bahaa Taher · 1991
Synopsis
A village in Upper Egypt, near Luxor, where an old Christian monastery stands beside the fields of Muslim peasants. The narrator, a boy, watches Safeya, his orphaned cousin, a girl of remarkable beauty, grow up in his home. She was believed to be promised to Harbi, another orphaned cousin, ward of the bey; yet it is the old bey who marries her, and a son is born. Soon rumour, hatred and the law of blood take hold of the family, and Harbi must seek refuge with the monks.
Context
The novel was published in 1991, when its author was still living in Geneva. It returns to the land of his parents, the Luxor region, and sets blood vengeance against a Coptic monastery that shelters a threatened Muslim. Catherine Bachellerie translated it into French for Autrement in 1996, the year Barbara Romaine published the English version with University of California Press, the first of a novel by the author. It received the Italian Giuseppe Acerbi Prize in 2000.
Who it is for
A short novel of about one hundred and twenty pages in French, told from a child's point of view, in the heart of rural Upper Egypt.
Prizes and reception
Giuseppe Acerbi Prize in 2000, and the first book by its author that could be read in English.
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