This multi-layered novel about the depths of human experience and the struggle between polarities, on the surface presents a love story of unrequited passion between Rama and Mikhail. Their story reflects the relationship not only between man and woman, Copt and Muslim, but also between Upper and Lower Egypt. Through a delicate grid of intertextual references and juxtaposed narratives, the dreams and hopes, fears and defeats of Rama and Mikhail move from the local to the global, corresponding to human dreams and anxieties everywhere. In this novel, Edwar al-Kharrat has created a unique form of narrative discourse in which he presents Egyptian realities and actualities of the 1960s and 1970s, with flashbacks to as early as the 1940s, in an aesthetic form that highlights historical moments while blending philosophical, mythical, and psychological perspectives in a literary parallel to the cinematic technique of montage.
- ISBN10 1306503892
- ISBN13 9781306503891
- Publish Date 1 January 2004 (first published 30 April 2003)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 18 March 2015
- Publish Country US
- Imprint American University in Cairo Press
- Format eBook
- Pages 261
- Language English