Traces of Enayat
by Iman Mersal, translated by Robin Moger
Buy on AmazonCairo, 1963: Enayat al-Zayyat's suicide becomes a byword for talent tragically cut down, even as Love and Silence, her only novel, languishes unpublished. Four years after al-Zayyat's death, the novel will be brought out, adapted for film and radio, praised, and then, cursorily, forgotten. For the next three decades it's as if al-Zayyat never existed.Yet when poet Iman Mersal stumbles across Love and Silence in the nineties, she is immediately hooked. Who was Enayat? Did the thought of her novel's rejection really lead to her suicide? Where did this startling voice come from? And why did Love and Silence disappear from literary history?…
Recommended by
"The winners of Britain’s oldest literary awards (alongside the Hawthorndon Prize ) were announced in May. This year, for the first time, there were two winners of the biography prize. The first, Traces of Enayat , by Iman Mersal (translated into English by Robin Moger) is an intriguingly uncategorisable book—equal parts biography, memoir, and speculation—that artfully and movingly portrays the life of Enayat al-Zayyat, a largely forgotten Egyptian writer who died by suicide in 1963. “To trace someone,” Mersal writes, “is a dialogue that is perforce one-sided.” Despite great efforts, ultimate Mersal experiences “despair” over the impossibility of understanding the truth of al-Zayyat’s life. These “remnants,” explains the New Yorker , are “embroidered” with photographs and personal reflections, “leaving behind a seductive mystery.”"
Award-Winning Biographies of 2024 · fivebooks.com