The ‘Second-work Crisis’

After publishing Tilka al-raʾiha, Sonallah Ibrahim, by his own admission, was in something of a dilemma as to what to do next. Speaking to Youssef Rakha in 2003, he explained that:

The work in question, entitled al-Riwaya (Story), remained unpublished, but a xeroxed copy of the typescript (faded and difficult to read) survives in Oxford and was discussed by Ali Jad in his Form and Technique in the Egyptian Novel. Dated Beirut, 19 August 1968, the seventy-one- page manuscript shows the author again employing the ‘telegraphic’ prose style of Tilka al-Ra ʾiha in a first-person narrative that, like his earlier work, to a considerable extent revolves around the narrator's unsatisfactory sexual relationships – the most significant of which here takes the form of an affair with his brother's wife. Although the work gives the impression of being perhaps a trifle less self-centred than Tilka al-raʾiha, however, and the relationships are less ephemeral and more sustained, al-Riwaya nonetheless does not suggest any major development either in the author's technique or in his use of thematic material, and several scenes suggest above all a desire to shock. All in all, it is hard to resist the conclusion both that the work is little more than a ‘rerun’ of Tilka al-raʾiha, and that, in terms of the development of his literary career, Sonallah Ibrahim was right not to pursue the publication further.