Searching for Myself

About this book

Beginning in rural Egypt in 1910 and moving toward Cairo and imagined possibilities beyond Europe, Searching for Myself follows lives shaped by abuse, fear, and the longing to escape. Ali dreams of deliverance, Faten looks for hope within the walls of confinement, and Khalil, a doctor, encounters souls whose suffering unsettles everything he understands. Their destinies converge in an atmosphere of history, mystery, and the uncanny, where the body can become both evidence and prison. Youssef Adel Mahmoud uses the idea of wandering souls to explore identity, trauma, and the forces that seem to drive people along paths they did not choose. The novel asks whether liberation begins by leaving a place, escaping a body, or finally confronting the truth held within it.