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Podcast: New Books in Women's History
Episode: Iman Mersal, "Traces of Enayat" (Transit Books, 2023)
Description: Traces of Enayat (Transit Books, 2023) is a work of creative nonfiction tracing the mysterious life and erasure of Egyptian literature’s tragic heroine. It begins in Cairo, 1963. Four years before her lone novel is finally published, the writer Enayat al-Zayyat takes her own life at age 27. For the next three decades, it’s as if Enayat never existed at all. Years later, when celebrated Egyptian poet Iman Mersal stumbles upon Enayat’s long-forgotten Love and Silence in a Cairo book stall, she embarks on a journey of reflection and rediscovery that leads her ever closer to the world and work of E...