Hani was out for an evening stroll near Cairo's Tahrir Square when a heavy hand landed on his shoulder. An informant had identified him, and he was thrown into the back of a police truck. There began a seven-month nightmare as he was swept up, along with fifty other men, in the infamous Queen Boat affair that targeted Egypt's gay community. Finally free, but traumatized into speechlessness, Hani writes down the events of his life – his first sexual desires, his relationship with his mother, his marriage of convenience, and his passion for Abdel Aziz, the only man he ever truly loved.
In the Spider's Room is a sensitive and courageous account of life as a gay man in Egypt.
Über die Autorin / über den Autor:Muhammad Abdelnabi, born in 1977, is the author of two novels and four short-story collections. His The Ghost of Anton Chekov won first prize in the Emerging Writers category of the Sawiris Cultural Award for short-story collections in 2011. In the Spider's Room was shortlisted for the 2017 International Prize for Arabic Fiction and was joint winner of the 2017 Sawiris Cultural Award for novels in the Emerging Writers category. He lives near Banha in Egypt.
Jonathan Wright ist the translator of the winning novel in the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and twice winner of the Said Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, and was formerly the Reuters bureau chief in Cairo. He has translated Alaa Al Aswany, Youssef Ziedan, and Hassan Blassim. He lives in London.
Preis: CHF 18.90
