The novel No One Sleeps in Alexandria appears on the Muse list of the 100 best novels of all time. In Egypt, it was a huge success when it was published a decade ago and won the Cairo Book Fair Prize in 1996. The work has now been published in Spanish by Ediciones del Oriente y del Mediterráneo, with the cooperation of the Toledo School of Translators, in a translation by Pablo García. The presentation of this translation at Casa Árabe will include the participation of novelist and poet Bernardo Atxaga.  

In this work, Ibrahim Abdel Meguid uses his penetrating glance to describe the everyday life of Alexandria throughout the years of World War II, by examining the rough life lived by a married couple, Zahra and Magdeddin, who are forced to leave their village and move to this city, right at the time when the Nazis invade Poland in Europe.  

The work recounts several episodes that took place in North Africa during the war, tied together by the common thread of interwoven Muslim and Coptic lives, including people from both North and South, men and women, providing enrichment from within the vision of Cavafis, Forster or Durrell’s Alexandria. 

The presentation will include the participation of Ibrahim Abdel Meguid, the book’s author, Bernardo Atxaga, writer, and Luis Miguel Pérez Cañada, the director of the Toledo School of Translators. The event will be presented by Pedro Villena, the General Director of Casa Árabe. 

Ibrahim Abdel Meguid. Abdel Meguid was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1946. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Letters at the University of Alexandria in 1973. That same year, he moved to Cairo to work at the Ministry of Culture, and he has stayed in the city ever since. During the seventies, he was a militant in the Communist Party, prohibited at that time, and despite having been jailed, his commitment and political activity never waned.

Throughout his literary career, he has combined and continues to combine mainly two facets of writing: criticism and creativity. Shortly after earning his degree in Philosophy, he had his first novel published and soon took over the position of Cultural Affairs Advisor for the People’s Culture Department, where he remained from 1976 to 1982. He was also a member of the publishing board of the Egyptian Book Council (1985-1990) and the director of the People’s Culture Department from 1990 to 1995. He was at the helm of the “Kitabat Jadida” collection from 1995 until the year 2000.

He has written many novels and stories, earning him acknowledgment as one of the best-known, most highly respected authors in Egypt. In 1996, he won the Naguib Mahfouz Prize given by the American University of Cairo for his novel Al-balad al-ukhra (The Other Place). That same year, he won the prize for best novel at the International Book Fair of Cairo, for his novel La ahada yanam fi l-Iskandaria (No One Sleeps in Alexandria). In 2004, he was awarded with the Literary Excellence Prize given by the Egyptian State. His works have been translated into English, French and German.

Bernardo Atxaga. Atxaga was born in Asteasu in 1951. His real name is Jose Irazu. His most notable books published in Spanish include Bi anai (Two Brothers); Obabakoak (1989, Basque Country Award, National Award for Prose), El hombre solo (The Lonely Man, 1994), Esos cielos (Those Skies, 1997), El hijo del acordeonista (The Accordionist’s Son, 2004, Grinzane Cavour Award, Mondello Award, Times Literary Supplement Translation Prize) and Siete casas en Francia (Seven Houses in France, 2009, finalist for the Independent Foreign  Fiction Prize, as well as being selected by Publishers Weekly magazine as one of the 15 best fictional books published in the United States in the year 2012) and Días de Nevada (Nevada Days, 2013). 

In the field of poetry, he had his first book, Etiopía (Ethiopia) published in 1978, and he won the Cesare Pavese Award of 2003 for the Italian translation of Poemas&Híbridos. His work has been translated into 32 languages, as well as being made into films by Montxo Armendariz (Obaba, 2005), Aizpea Goenaga (Zeru horiek, 2006) and Imanol Rayo (Bi anai, 2011). In 2006, he was named a member of Euskaltzaindia, the Basque Language Academy.