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Jan
2009
316 pp.
Hardbound
24.00 x 23.00 cm
$24.95
LE
90.00
ISBN
978 977 416 222 0
For sale only in the Middle East
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The Seven Veils of Seth
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Ibrahim al-Koni
Translated by
William M. Hutchins
From the award-winning author of Anubis and Gold Dust
In the ancient Egyptian religion, Seth is the evil god who out of jealousy slays his brother Osiris, the good god of agriculture, to seize the throne. Seth is, however, also the god of the desert and therefore a benevolent champion of desert dwellers like the traditionally nomadic Tuareg. In The Seven Veils of Seth, al-Koni draws on the tension between these two opposing visions of Seth to create a novel that also provides a vivid account of daily life in a Tuareg oasis.
Isan—either Seth himself or a latter-day avatar— is a desert-wandering seer and proponent of desert life. When he settles for an extended stay in a fertile oasis, the results are disastrous, and we encounter infanticide, betrayal, metamorphosis, and murder.
Tuareg folklore, Egyptian mythology, Russian literature, and medieval European thought are all part of this existential reflection on life in which the truth is elusive, a mirage pulsing at the horizon.
Ibrahim al-Koni was born in Libya in 1948. His novel Anubis was published by the AUC Press in 2005, and Gold Dust in 2008. He was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Prize for Literature in 2008.
William M. Hutchins is the principal translator of Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, and has most recently translated Fadhil al-Azzawi’s Cell Block Five (AUC Press, 2008).
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