Many Lives of Ibrahim Nagui
WINNER OF THE SAWIRIS CULTURAL AWARD
A multigenerational literary memoir that sheds new light on one of the Arab world’s most renowned Romantic poets, through the eyes of his granddaughter
Ibrahim Nagui (1898–1953) was one of the Arab world’s most important Romantic poets writing in Arabic during the first half of the twentieth century. A founding member of the Apollo school, he also published widely in the fields of medicine, nutrition, psychology, sociology, and translation.
This multigenerational, genre-crossing work of literary nonfiction sheds new light on Nagui through the eyes of his granddaughter, literary scholar Samia Mehrez. Nagui is best known for his poem al-Atlal (“the Ruins”), which was later sung by legendary Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum. Drawing on a series of family archives, including Nagui’s own published and unpublished writings, Mehrez embarks on a journey through multiple languages, generations, and geographies, as she comes to reconcile with the shadow of her grandfather, who died two years before she was born. Mehrez unpacks many of the myths surrounding Nagui and in doing so, reflects on how he impacted her own career as a literary critic.
Samia Mehrez (Author) is professor emerita of Arabic literature in the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations and founder of the Center for Translation Studies at the American University in Cairo (2009–2021). She is the author of Egyptian Writers between History and Fiction (AUC Press, 1994) and Egypt's Culture Wars (2008), and the editor of The Literary Atlas of Cairo, The Literary Life of Cairo, and Translating Egypt’s Revolution: The Language of Tahrir (AUC Press, 2010, 2011, 2012).
Eleanor Ellis (Translated by) is an Arabic-English translator. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University.