بيت النار

Mustafa and his sister Qamar grow up in Cairo with a mother widowed young, slipping away by night from a flat they hate on al-Assal Street. From the 1960s into the early 1980s Mustafa works his way through a long string of jobs, each described in detail: selling ice, ironing clothes, a printing press, the till of a juice shop, journalism, and wartime army service among the dead of a military cemetery. Around him lies the Shubra of those years, with places that have since vanished. As a young man he joins a communist organization and falls in love, and after the 1973 war he watches the movement's hopes falter as Sadat goes his own way.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

350 pages in the original

First published

2011 by Dar Merit

Author's age

61 when first published