Sunset Oasis
Bahaa Taher
‘The desert is a space in which people discover themselves,’ says the author Bahaa Taher, and the desert is where his novel Sunset Oasis is set, in the last years of the 19th century.
It depicts the life of a middle-aged government official, Mahmoud Abd el Zahir, who is sent by his British superiors to govern the oasis of Siwa as a punishment for his involvement in the failed Urabi revolt in 1882.
Frustrated by the failure of the revolution and experiencing a gradual draining of his intimate feelings for his wife, Mahmoud decides to accept the mission. Except that his wife decides to accompany him, on a mission of her own, to follow the footsteps of Alexander the Great. His desperate attempts to discourage her fail, and he ends up followed by the shadow of his troubled emotions on a journey he originally wanted to use ‘to discover himself’.
Nomination
2008 Winner
Bahaa Taher
Country of origin Egypt
About the author
Bahaa Taher was born in Giza, Greater Cairo, in 1935, to Upper Egyptian parents from the village of Karnak, Luxor. He holds postgraduate diplomas in History and Mass Media from Cairo University. He has published 17 books (six novels, five short story collections, and six non-fiction works), as well as numerous translations from English and French. His novel, Sunset Oasis, won the inaugural International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2008. The book was subsequently published in English in the UK through Sceptre.