Al-Rafi'i: Hassan Vanished from His Books

About this book

At Alexandria University, a debate over modern materialism and literary heritage leads Nour El-Din to an old bookshop called Revelation of the Pen. A faint annotation in an aging volume points toward a deliberately erased phrase, an elderly man's decades-old confession, and a restricted state file. The investigation carries him from Alexandria's old quarters to Cairo's book markets and archives before turning into an abduction and a surreal descent into a city of living books. Mariam Mohamed Tawfik blends literary history, mystery, and fantasy to ask whether writers create words—or words quietly write human destiny.