LONDON: At first, readers of “In the Footsteps of Enayat Al-Zayyat,” a book by Egyptian poet, translator and academic Iman Mersal, may take it as a straightforward biography. But as the book unfolds, it reveals its multiple layers, asking questions about the notion of archiving, women’s writing, and mental illness.
Al-Zayyat committed suicide in 1963 after battling depression and struggling to get her first — and only — novel, “Love and Silence,” published. That did eventually happen, but only four years after her death.
“I started with a very simple question about ‘Love and Silence,’” Mersal, who first read Al-Zayyat’s book in 1993, tells Arab News. “Who wrote it? Who is Enayat Al-Zayyat? And why was the novel excluded from the canon of Arabic literature? This was the simple question behind my book.
“But when you dig in behind any individual story, you find so many things that are worthy of reading, including the story of a young woman writing in the late 1950s/ early 1960s, for example, of a woman standing in the face of the law during the same era, mental illness, and so many other things,” she adds.
Published by Al Kotob Khan in 2019, Mersal’s book recently won the literature category of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. (Supplied)
As she worked on Al-Zayyat’s story, Mersal’s aim was “not to bring an unknown writer into the canon of Arabic literature,” but rather to “read the past through one individual, Enayat Al-Zayyat, to whom I felt attached after reading her novel and fragments of her own story.”
“The book was my way of revisiting the 1950s and 1960s to know Enayat’s story but to also revisit the question of individuality during Gamal Abdel Nasser’s era, as well as during the 1990s when I was a young woman and writer living in Cairo, exactly like Enayat,” Mersal explains.
Published by Al Kotob Khan in 2019, Mersal’s book recently won the literature category of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award.
“Writing in itself is a gift. But for a writer to be recognized and well read, it’s very beautiful,” Mersal says of the award.
“Yes, the award might give you more readership and attention and I’m happy and honored for sure,” she adds. “But it’s also great just to be able to keep working.”
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