That Smell and Notes from Prison

by Sonallah Ibrahim, Robyn Creswell (Translator)

Overview

That Smell is Sonallah Ibrahim’s modernist masterpiece and one of the most influential Arabic novels. Composed in the wake of a five-year prison sentence, the semi-autobiographical story follows a recently released political prisoner as he wanders through Cairo, adrift in his native city.

That Smell is Sonallah Ibrahim’s modernist masterpiece and one of the most influential novels written in Arabic since WWII. Composed after a five-year term in prison, the semi-autobiographical story follows a recently released political prisoner as he wanders through Cairo, adrift in his native city. Living under house arrest, he tries to write of his tortuous experience, but instead smokes, spies on the neighbors, visits old lovers, and marvels at Egypt’s new consumer culture. Published in 1966, That Smell was immediately banned and the print-run confiscated. The original, uncensored version did not appear in Egypt for another twenty years.

For this edition, translator Robyn Creswell has also included an annotated selection of the author’s Notes from Prison, Ibrahim’s prison diaries—a personal archive comprising hundreds of handwritten notes copied onto Bafra-brand cigarette papers and smuggled out of jail. These stark, intense writings shed unexpected light on the sources and motives of Ibrahim’s groundbreaking novel. Also included in this edition is Ibrahim’s celebrated essay about the writing and reception of That Smell.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811220361
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	03/22/2013
Series:	Ndp
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Born in Cairo in 1937, Sonallah Ibrahim studied law at Cairo University and was imprisoned in 1959 for his political activities. After his release he spent several years abroad and returned in 1974 to Cairo, where he has lived ever since. In 2004 he was awarded — and pointedly declined — the Egyptian government’s prestigious Novelist of the Year prize.

A critic, translator, and scholar, Robyn Creswell is currently the poetry editor for the Paris Review and assistant professor of comparative literature at Yale.

What People are Saying About This

Benjamin Kunkel

Robyn Creswell’s translation of Ibrahim's exhiliratingly bleak novel gives English-speaking readers a new classic of mid-century existentialism and, at the same time, a window onto an Egypt too few of us have glimpsed in literature or elsewhere.

J. M. Coetzee

The pervasive moral corruption of Nasser’s Egypt seeps up between the lines of Ibrahim’s seemingly affectless prose. A landmark in Egyptian literature.

Editorial Reviews

"The pervasive moral corruption of Nasser’s Egypt seeps up between the lines of Ibrahim’s seemingly affectless prose. A landmark in Egyptian literature."

J. M. Coetzee

"A controlled howl of fury."

Los Angeles Review of Books - Jeremy Lybarger

"Bold, uncompromising writing."

The Daily Beast

"To this day, That Smell is a modernist masterpiece, a peerless provocation and a lodestar in the history of Arabic literature."

The Daily Star - Lebanon

"Since the 1960s, Sonallah Ibrahim has been Egypt's literary voice of political conscience."

Jadaliyya

"That Smell is not just a story, it is a revolution, the beginning of which is the artist's rebellion against himself."

Yusuf Idris

"One of the Arab world's most distinguished novelist... an intellectual who thoroughly understands the price and value of freedom."

Al-Ahram - Sarnia Mehrez

"Robyn Creswell has knocked it out of the park with his translation of Sonallah Ibrahim’s modern Egyptian classic."

The Paris Review Daily - Lorin Stein

"That Smell marks a significant entry into the diminutive collection of Arabic literature translated into English, providing a dramatic new view of literature to American readers who otherwise see hardly any of it. "

The New York Review of Books - Yasmine El Rashidi