Lit in Translation

The House of the Coptic Woman

بيت القبطية · Bayt al-qibtiyya

Ashraf El-Ashmawi (أشرف العشماوي, born 1966)

Translated by Peter Daniel

English editions

In English

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A young investigating magistrate is sent to a small village in the north of Upper Egypt to follow up some criminal cases and finds something more dangerous: killings without any logical motive, suspicious suicides, and crops and houses set on fire for no apparent reason. Suspicion spreads to everyone, the magistrate included, and his fate becomes entangled with that of a mysterious Coptic woman. The novel moves between tension and dark comedy as it explores complicated people.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form
Novel
Length
237 pages in the original
Genres
Crime (assigned by AI)
Set in
Egypt
First published
2019 by al-Dar al-Misriyya al-Lubnaniyya
Author's age
53 when first published
ISBN

9789777952460 (original)

9781649032546 (Hoopoe, Egypt)

9781649032539 (Hoopoe, Egypt)