Two very different Egyptian novels – Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s The Men Who Swallowed the Sun and Mohamed Kheir’s Slipping – both circle around issues of migration in different ways. Abu Golayyel’s Men (originally The Rise and Fall of the Saad Shin), translated by Humphrey Davies, is an anti-epic epic told in a rough, powerful storyteller’s voice, following men as they move from Egypt to Libya and Italy. Mohamed Kheir’s Slipping, translated by Robin Moger, is a beautifully crafted sonic landscape of appearances and disappearances.

Show Notes

An excerpt of The Men Who Swallowed the Sun is available at the Hoopoe Fiction website.

“The practice and culture of smuggling in the borderland of Egypt and Libya,” by Thomas Hüsken, is available on the Chatham House website.

An excerpt of Slipping appeared at LitHub.

Abu Bakr Khaal’s novel African Titanics, translated to English by Charis Bredon, is available from Dar al-Saqi and Darf Books.