Diary of a Country Prosecutor

by Tawfik Al-Hakim, Abba Eban (Translator), P. H. Newby (Foreword by)

Overview

Who shot Kamar al-Dawla Alwan? Was it a crime of passion? What was the role of the beautiful peasant girl Rim? Is the mysterious Sheikh Asfur as crazy as he seems?

Diary of a Country Prosecutor is an Egyptian comedy of errors. Partly autobiographical, it is written as the journal of a young public prosecutor posted to a village in rural Egypt. Imbued with the ideals of a European education, he encounters a world of poverty and backwardness where an imported legal system is both alien and incomprehensible.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780863569814
Publisher:	Saqi Books
Publication date:	10/24/2023
Series:	Saqi Bookshelf
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.25(d)

About the Author

Tawfiq al-Hakim is one of the major pioneer figures in modern Arabic literature. Born in Alexandria in 1898 to an Egyptian father and Turkish mother, he studied law in Paris, then worked as a public prosecutor in a provincial Egyptian town. He became the Arab world’s leading dramatist, as well as a major short-story writer and a man of letters, notably publishing many articles against Nazism and Fascism during WWII. He died in 1987.

 

Editorial Reviews

‘A satirical tale of country life under a repressive and faraway Cairo legal system.’ Literary Review

‘Touching and yet savagely funny.’ Bookseller

Praise for the author:

‘The model of a twentieth-century Arab public intellectual … he led the literary renaissance that self-consciously sought to give shape to the social and political awakening following the 1919 Egyptian uprising against British rule.’ Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher