Warda
by Sonallah Ibrahim

Translated from the Arabic
by Hosam Aboul-Ela

Sonallah Ibrahim’s 2000 masterpiece offers readers a view of twentieth-century world events through the diary pages of his titular character

HB ISBN: 978-0300228656. 376 pages. Also Kindle edition.
First published June 2021 by Yale University Press in their series The Margellos World Republic of Letters. Entered for the 2022 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize.

From the publisher, Yale University Press:

1950s Cairo: the intersection of conflicting dreams and political destinies. In this classic novel translated for the first time into English, idealistic reporter Rushdy encounters the enchanting Warda and her brother Yaarib at a clandestine leftist meeting. Their fates would be forever linked. Decades after Warda goes missing, Rushdy immerses himself in her diaries in a quest to uncover her whereabouts. The search takes him to the hills of Dhofar, Oman, where he discovers Warda’s guerrilla role in a regional uprising and secret involvement in revolutions with echoes around the globe. Piece by revelatory piece, Rushdy uncovers the truth about Warda—and the fiery commitment that drove her to choose the life she lived.

Widely acknowledged as a masterpiece by one of Egypt’s most important novelists, this is an unforgettable story of intrigue, passion, and revolution.

From Books in Brief, Banipal 75:
First published in Arabic in 2000, this is a story of intrigue, passion, and revolution, and ordinary people, that examines critical events of the last century through a diary kept by Warda, a Yemeni communist.

In the 1990s, years after she has mysteriously gone missing, her friend Rushdy, an Egyptian journalist, starts to uncover Warda’s secret life of revolutionary commitment, after her diaries, written in the 1960s and 1970s, are sent to him. He discovers she had taken on a guerrilla role in Dhofar, Oman, supporting the Dhofar Liberation Front in its struggle for an independent state.

About the author Sonallah Ibrahim

Sonallah Ibrahim was born in 1937. After studying law and drama at Cairo University, he became a journalist in Cairo until his arrest and imprisonment in 1959 as an advocate for the Left. Upon his release in 1964, he briefly returned to journalism in Egypt before moving to Berlin to work for a news agency and to Moscow where he studied cinematography. He returned to Egypt in 1974 and since then has dedicated all his time to writing.

He has written a number of novels and short stories, as well as a dozen children's books. He has also translated a variety of books into Arabic. He is well known for his documentary novels that employ a literary style unique in Arabic writing. In 1998 his novel Sharaf was awarded best Egyptian novel. In 1999 he was a visiting associate professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies of the University of California at Berkeley. Among his many translated works are Zaat (2001), Stealth (2010) and That Smell & Notes from Prison (2013), as well as the forthcoming English translation of his 1984 novel Beirut, Beirut. His book, Yawmiyat al-Wahat (Diaries of Oasis Prison), Cairo, 2005, is excerpted in Banipal 50.

About the translator Hosam Aboul-Ela

Hosam Aboul-Ela is a Professor of English and the AAEF Burhan and Misako Ajuz Professor of Arab Studies at the University of Houston, Texas, USA. His research interests are in the areas of comparative literature, literary theory, Arab cultural studies, U.S. literature, and postcolonial / deimperial studies.

He is the author of two books of criticism, one of which is Domestications: American Empire, Literary Culture, and the Postcolonial Lens (Northwestern University Press, 2018),  and numerous scholarly articles.

He has translated four Arabic novels into English, which include two by Sonallah Ibrahim – Warda and Stealth (first published in English translation by Aflame and excerpted in Banipal 34 – The World of Arab Fiction, 2009, and recently republished by New Directions),  also Distant Train by Ibrahim Abdel Meguid. He is the editor of Seagull Books Arabic List. 

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