The Book of Sleep

The Book of Sleep is a groundbreaking work of contemporary Arabic literature that explores the concept of sleep as action and agency, and the transformation of the waking selves we understand ourselves to be. Written in 2013 during the Egyptian government's unraveling, the book combines poetry, philosophical reflection, political analysis, and storytelling to present an assemblage of fragments that challenge conventional notions of literature and thinking.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 168 pages
Publication date: 21 December 2021
Publisher: Seagull Books London Ltd

What is sleep? How can this most unproductive of human states—metaphorically called deaths shadow or considered the very pinnacle of indolence—be envisioned as action and agency? And what do we become in sleep? What happens to the waking selves we understand ourselves to be? Written in the spring of 2013,as the Egyptian government of President Mohammed Morsi was unraveling in the face of widespread protests, The Book of Sleep is a landmark in contemporary Arabic literature. Drawing on the devices and forms of poetry,philosophical reflection,political analysis,and storytelling,this genre-defying work presents us with an assemblage of fragments that combine and recombine,circling around their central theme but refusing to fall into its gravity. “My concern was not to create a literary product in the conventional sense,but to try and use literature as a methodology for thinking,” El Wardany explains. In this volume,sleep shapes sentences and distorts conventions. Its protean instability throws out memoir and memory,dreams and hallucinatory reverie,Sufi fables and capitalist parables,in the quest to shape a question. The Book of Sleep is a generous and generative attempt to reimagine possibility and hope in a world of stifling dualities and constrictions.

What is sleep? How can this most unproductive of human states—metaphorically called deaths shadow or considered the very pinnacle of indolence—be envisioned as action and agency? And what do we become in sleep? What happens to the waking selves we understand ourselves to be? Written in the spring of 2013,as the Egyptian government of President Mohammed Morsi was unraveling in the face of widespread protests, The Book of Sleep is a landmark in contemporary Arabic literature. Drawing on the devices and forms of poetry,philosophical reflection,political analysis,and storytelling,this genre-defying work presents us with an assemblage of fragments that combine and recombine,circling around their central theme but refusing to fall into its gravity. “My concern was not to create a literary product in the conventional sense,but to try and use literature as a methodology for thinking,” El Wardany explains. In this volume,sleep shapes sentences and distorts conventions. Its protean instability throws out memoir and memory,dreams and hallucinatory reverie,Sufi fables and capitalist parables,in the quest to shape a question. The Book of Sleep is a generous and generative attempt to reimagine possibility and hope in a world of stifling dualities and constrictions.

Weight: 202g
Dimension: 126 x 203 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780857429537