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This novel was short listed for the Arab Booker Prize, it has been reprinted five times.
From a review published in Alahram Weekly by Mona Anis:
one of the narrative strategies that the hallucinating protagonist of Swan Song employs is to compare himself to members of this fallen generation, whom he holds in contempt. "What's the difference between [you] and all those people now peddling human rights, women's rights and anti- discrimination slogans," he asks. "All those former colleagues who have milked the few weeks they spent in jail, boasting loudly of their sacrifices on satellite TV channels?"
Referring to the way in which a mutual friend has changed political direction and now embraces Islamism after having been an ardent Marxist, a friend asks the novel's protagonist "and what is wrong with that? .. Isn't what has happened to him better than the ways in which some formerly leftist colleagues have changed? At least he hasn't started stealing, or helping to cover up the corruption, or begun sucking the blood of the poor... He has always been in search of an ideal. Let him enjoy the dream of achieving that under whatever banner provides him with protection."
Contact address: Mekkawi Said mekkawisaid@yahoo.com
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The protagonist of this novel is a journalist in his sixties who at one point in his youth was arrested for his political activities. All his memories relate to that time in his life, the era of Sanallah Ibrahim's "Warda", re-living his journalistic career covering Fidel Castro, Ghandi and others of the liberation movement. His uneventful life does not match up with the current realities leading him to experience an emptiness and a spiritual death. Other conditions such as personal frailty lead him to find himself a captive to a flimsy woman who exhibits no interest in the tragic condition of the world overwhelmed with misery and struggle; instead, her sole occupation is in the prices of vegetables, clothes and the timetable of television sit-coms. Her interest in his journalistic columns focuses on his photo that is printed at the top of the page. Muhammad Nagi also introduces another character - with a more cruel predicament- that of the hero, Zaghlul al-Desouki, who was once a contact person in the secret political party they both belonged. He dies alone in an old people's home with no recognition or mercy. The heroes in this novel resonate with an earlier work, "Time of Harvest", that depicts the decapitations and deaths of many beginning with Imam al-Hussein, Abu Na'was, a head of the Qaramita sect until the present time. Neither those who were killed or those who wielded the sword accomplished any memorable victory; and nor did the world change for the better.
Contact address: sphinx.agency@gmail.com
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Mahmoud, the protagonist of this novel, had fear installed in his heart since childhood under a selfish tyrannical father who in walking out on his family in search of wealth leaves the responsibility of his family to his brother in law. Mahmoud falls in love with a revolutionary girl (Wafa') in college and the emotional experience creates a turbulent crisis between emotions of fear and love. Fear wins and leads the protagonist down a path of self-destruction of drink and unemployment. This fate contrasts to that of Wafa' who, marginalized and poor, initially experiences her social inferiority in contrast to the more affluent girls at university. She is tutored by a leftist who encourages her to persevere and establishes her distinction. The crackdown by Sadat in 1977 causes the imprisonment of her tutor and she finds herself abandoned by all who once knew and supported her. In failing to face his love for her and to share her political convictions, Mahmoud under material limitations and the absence of a father figure finds himself lost. The rats are the first to abandon a drowning ship and this novel depicts the student movement in Egypt in the mid seventies especially the leftist branch whose action influenced the many political and economic changes after the 1973 war. Essentially it is a political and social novel that sets to criticize an important political era.
Contact address: sphinx.agency@gmail.com
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