Sonallah Ibrahim

Son'allah Ibrahim (Arabic: صنع الله إبراهيم, romanized: Ṣunʻ Allāh Ibrāhīm; 3 August 1937 – 13 August 2025) was an Egyptian novelist and short story writer and one of the "Sixties Generation" who was known for his leftist views which are expressed rather directly in his work.^[1] His novels, especially later ones, incorporate many excerpts from newspapers, magazines and other political sources as a way to enlighten the people about a certain political or social issue. Because of his political opinions he was imprisoned during the 1960s; his imprisonment is featured in his first book, That Smell (تلك الرائحة), which was one of the first works of Egyptian literature to feature a modernist view.

In harmony with his political beliefs, in 2003 he refused to accept a prestigious literary award worth £E100,000 from Egypt's Ministry of Culture.

Sonallah Ibrahim was born in Cairo on 3 August 1937.^[2][3] His father was an upper-middle-class civil servant; his mother, from a poor background, had been a nurse hired to look after his father's paralysed first wife. Ibrahim entered Cairo University to study law in 1952.^[4] There he joined the Marxist Democratic Movement for National Liberation (DMNL). Despite the DMNL's support for Nasser's coup, Nasser moved to repress Communists in the late 1950s.^[5] Ibrahim, arrested in 1959, received a seven-year prison sentence from a military tribunal.^[4] He was released in 1964 on the occasion of Nikita Khrushchev visiting Egypt for the opening of the Aswan Dam.^[5] In 1968 Ibrahim was one of the Egyptian intellectuals who contributed to the avant-garde literary magazine Galerie 68.^[2]

Ibrahim died on 13 August 2025, at the age of 88, after suffering from pneumonia.^[6]

Hosam Aboul-Ela, de la Universidad de Houston, describió a Ibrahim como "un implacable crítico interno de los sucesivos regímenes egipcios" y escribió que "a Ibrahim se le podría describir como una especie de cruce egipcio entre Jonathan Swift y Manuel Puig ". ^{[ 7 ]}

Sus novelas suelen estar narradas en primera persona, con un tono frío y objetivo que recuerda al periodismo y que imita la realidad. Su tema principal parece ser la importancia de resistir la influencia de las megapotencias políticas que intentan invadir económicamente el tercer mundo por diversos medios, incluyendo las empresas transcontinentales. Por ejemplo, «Sharaf» (=Honor) aborda la intrusión de la política estadounidense en Egipto e incluye largos pasajes que critican abiertamente a las grandes farmacéuticas y sus políticas en los países del tercer mundo. Sus intereses no se limitan a la situación en Egipto; «Beirut… Beirut» es una especie de panorama general de la guerra civil libanesa de los años 70 y 80, y «Warda» revela un episodio poco conocido sobre las actividades de izquierdistas y comunistas en Yemen y Omán en los años 60 y 70. El título de una de sus últimas novelas es "Amricanly", que superficialmente significa "estadounidense" o "a la manera estadounidense", pero en realidad es una parodia de otra palabra, "Othmanly", relacionada con la tristemente célebre Edad Media, cuando Turquía gobernaba Egipto. La palabra "Amricanly" es, en cierto modo, casi una transliteración de la frase "Mis asuntos eran míos" en árabe. Su novela "El Comité" suele ser descrita por la crítica como kafkiana . En ella, el protagonista busca ingresar en una organización clandestina. Es sometido rutinariamente a su proceso de investigación y Sonallah utilizó a su personaje para hacer numerosas observaciones políticas en forma de discursos ante el comité.

Several of Ibrahim's works also explore how repetition and fastidious attention to detail can be used to examine the themes of childhood innocence, boredom, and sexual frustration. In Stealth, the narrator recounts his childhood memories living with his father in a small, modest apartment. By describing each part of a mundane action, such as hanging up a coat or cooking some eggs, the narrator conveys his childhood curiosity and naivete about the adult world around him. In Ice, extensive repetition of intimate acts, with the same atomistic attention to detail, indicates the narrator's boredom and frustration with life as a foreign student in Soviet Russia.

• تلك الرائحة [Tilka al-rāʾiḥah] (1966). Included in The Smell of It & Other Stories, trans. Denys Johnson-Davies (1971); also retranslated in That Smell & Notes from Prison, trans. Robyn Creswell (New Directions, 2013).^[8]
  • This roman à clef novella, set during the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser, is about a young Egyptian writer who had been a political prisoner; he is released and takes a look at the street life in his country.^[7]
• إنسان السد العالي
• نجمة أغسطس [Najmat Aghustus] (1974). Star of August, trans. Anne Willborn (Seagull Books, forthcoming)
• اللجنة [al-Lajnah] (1981). The Committee, trans. Charlene Constable and Mary St. Germain (Syracuse University Press, 2001)
• بيروت بيروت [Bayrut, Bayrut] (1984). Beirut, Beirut, trans. Chip Rossetti (Bloomsbury Qatar, 2014)
• ذات [Dhat] (1992). Zaat, trans. Anthony Calderbank (American University in Cairo Press, 2001)
• شرف [Sharaf] (1997). Honor
• Cairo: From Edge to Edge (1999). A portrait of Cairo with photographer Jean-Pierre Ribière.
• وردة [Warda] (2000). Warda, trans. Hosam Aboul-Ela (Yale University Press, 2021)
• أمريكانلى [Amrikanli] (2003). Amricanly
• يوميات الواحات [Yawmiyyat al-Wahat] (2005). Diaries of Oasis Prison
• التلصص [al-Talassus] (2007). Stealth, trans. Hosam Aboul-Ela (Aflame Books, 2009; New Directions, 2011)
• Two Novels and Two Women/Zwei Romane und zwei Frauen, trans. Barbera Hess (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011)
• العمامة والقبعة [ al-ʿImama wa-al-Qubbaʿa ] (2008). El turbante y el sombrero, trad. Bruce Fudge (Libros Gaviota, 2022)
• القانون الفرنسي [ al-Qanun al-Faransi ] (2008). La ley francesa
• الجليد [ al - Jalid ] (2011). Hielo , trad. Margaret Litvin (Libros Gaviota, 2019) ^{[ 9 ]}
• برلين 69 [ Barlīn 69 ] (2014). Berlín 69
• النيل مآسي [ Al nil Maassy ] (2016). Las tragedias del Nilo
• 67 (2017)
• 1970 (2020). 1970: Los últimos días , trad. Eleanor Ellis (Seagull Books, 2024).

Como traductor

• العدو (El enemigo) de James William Drought

• Premio Al Owais 1992-1993 de Cuentos, Novelas y Teatro.
• El Premio Ibn Rushd a la Libertad de Pensamiento del año 2004 en Berlín .

• Sharaf (novela)
• El sigilo (novela)

• Aboul-Ela, Hosam ( Universidad de Houston ). «Reseñas de libros». Edebiyât , 2003, vol. 13, n.º 2, págs.  251-268 (páginas relevantes: 251-253). ISSN 0364-6505 impreso; ISSN 1477-2841 en línea/02/020251-18. Taylor & Francis Ltd , DOI: 10.1080/0364650032000143283.

• Sonallah Ibrahim en IMDb
• Son'allah Ibrahim rechazando un premio (en árabe)
• Biografía biográfica de Sonallah Ibrahim (en francés)