The Threads of the String

About this book

In "The Threads of the String," the story does not begin with a scream, but with a folk wedding procession and rising voices of congratulations, hiding behind them held breaths and apprehensions no one dares confess. We are here in the heart of the Egyptian countryside, where houses are so adjacent that a whisper in the bedroom may be heard by the neighbor, and where "land" is no mere soil, but the offer and existence for which blood may be spilled. The novel begins with the wedding scene of Mahab and Hend, a night that looks like a happy ending, but is in truth only the first knot in a long thread of events. Behind the walls of the Ramadan family house, we discover a parallel world; a mother plotting intrigues with love to protect her children, a father battling the neighbors' greed for a span of land, and a young man called Shabana finding himself trapped between his simple peasant reality and his dreams touching the strings of music at the conservatory. As events escalate, a mysterious crime occurs on the canal's edge, and "The Threads of the String" turns from a mere social drama into a journey searching for truth.