أيام الشمس المشرقةAyyam al-Shams al-Mushriqah

Shortlisted for the 2023 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (Arabic Booker), «Days of the Shining Sun» by Egyptian Novelist Miral al-Tahawy.

The events of Tales from the Town of Rising Sun are sandwiched between the suicide of Jamal, a young man torn between different identities, in the opening pages, and the suicide of Mimi, an African girl who has survived a massacre in her country, at the end of the novel. They take place in an imagined small town called Shining Sun on the southwestern border of America, where the illegal smuggling of workers and immigrants is a daily occurrence. The novel sheds light on a group marginalized in Western society who are – incorrectly – regarded as the survivors, and gives them a voice, delving deep into their concerns. Whilst it is a classic example of a narrative conveying the disorientation of exile, above all else it platforms the foreigner’s perspective; simultaneously rebelling against this new reality and finding a way to adapt to its harshness. - (arabicfiction.org)

Miral al-Tahawy is an Egyptian writer, novelist and academic, born in Ash Sharqia Governorate, Egypt, in 1968. She currently works as professor of Arabic literature at the College of World Languages and Translation, the University of Arizona. Her most well-known works include: «The Tent» (1995), «The Blue Aubergine» (1998), winner of the 2002 State Incentive Prize for the Novel in Egypt, «The Strumming of the Gazelles» (2002), and «Brooklyn Heights» (2010), shortlisted for the 2011 International Prize for Arabic Fiction and winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, awarded by the American University in Cairo. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages worldwide. She has also published a volume of short stories and academic studies, and has taught at universities in Virginia, North Carolina and the College of Sciences in Al-Fayoum University.