Sabeel Al Gharek

Award-winning novelist and AUC Professor of Applied Linguistics Reem Bassiouney’s new book, Sabeel Al Gharek is achieving substantial success with the first edition selling out in only five days and the second edition released shortly after.
Bassiouney attributes the book's success to the different layers of meaning it carries. “The book is historical, philosophical, romantic, Sufi and more. On the surface, the structure can either seem like a love story or a historical one, but as you go deeper, you explore different themes. It’s about history and myths, but also about life in general and the roads we take that affect who we are,” she said.

Earlier this year, Bassiouney was awarded the Supreme Council of Culture's 2019-2020 Naguib Mahfouz Award for Best Egyptian Novel for her best-selling book, Sons of the People: The Mamluk Trilogy, exploring the history of the Mamluks in Egypt with a deeper insight into their human experiences.

On the choice of history as a genre, Bassiouney expressed that “history is liberating. It gives me much more liberty to merge certain themes than in contemporary writing. It could be just me, but I find it easier when I’m writing about history.” In Sabeel Al Gharek, for example, Bassiouney merges magical realism with mythical history without restraint.

Sabeel Al Gharek was our book of the month in December 2020 and Reem Bassiouney was featured in our series : A writer, a vision, a journey.
To watch the video of this webinar with Reem Bassiouney Click Here