{"product_id":"the-men-who-swallowed-the-sun-9781649030948","title":"The Men Who Swallowed the Sun","description":"\u003cb\u003eCO-WINNER OF THE 2022 SAIF GHOBASH BANIPAL PRIZE\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbu Golayyel's gritty tale of two men's ill-conceived quest for a better life via the deserts of the Middle East and the cities of Europe is pure storytelling\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTwo Bedouin men from Egypt's Western Desert seek to escape poverty through different routes. One--the intellectual, terminally self-doubting, and avowedly autobiographical Hamdi--gets no further than southern Libya's fly-blown oasis of Sabha, while his cousin--the dashing, irrepressible Phantom Raider--makes it to the fleshpots of Milan. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe backdrop of this darkly comic and unsentimental story of illegal immigration is a brutal Europe and Muammar Gaddafi's rickety, rhetoric-propped Great State of the Masses, where \"the Leader\" fantasizes of welding Libyan and Egyptian Bedouin into a new self-serving political force, the Saad-Shin. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eCompelling and visceral, with a seductive, muscular irony, \u003ci\u003eThe Men Who Swallowed the Sun\u003c\/i\u003e is an unforgettable novel of two men and their fellow migrants and the extreme marginalization that drives them.\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eHamdi Abu Golayyel, \u003c\/b\u003e born in Fayoum, Egypt, in 1967, is a writer and a journalist. He is the author of numerous short story collections and novels, including \u003ci\u003eThieves in Retirement \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eA Dog with No Tail, \u003c\/i\u003ewhich was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2008. He is editor-in-chief of the Popular Studies series, which specializes in folklore research, and writes for Arabic news outlets, such as \u003ci\u003eal-Ittihad \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eal-Safir\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eHumphrey Davies\u003c\/b\u003e (1947-2021) translated some thirty book-length works from Arabic, including \u003ci\u003eThe Yacoubian Building\u003c\/i\u003e by Alaa Al Aswany, and was a two-time winner of the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Hoopoe","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50450023121170,"sku":"9781649030948","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_fa02e47a-40f0-4f6f-bd00-1e7d5b4bccb1.jpg?v=1729749186","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-men-who-swallowed-the-sun-9781649030948","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}