The Man Who Lost His Shadow. This item is unavailable.The Man Who Lost His Shadow

In this remarkable novel, Fathy Ghanem follows the life of Yusif Abdul Hamid who, by fate or bad intentions, inflicts misery on everybody he touches.

The Man Who Lost His Shadow tells the story of a struggling journalist through the eyes of the people whose lives he ruined.

Muhammad Nagi: a newspaper editor who is preparing himself for a life-changing promotion - until Yusif steals it right from underneath him.

Mabruka: a young peasant girl pressured to marry Yusif's father before being left abandoned to support her son alone.

Samia: an aspiring actress who is drawn into a relationship with Yusif but ultimately forced to miss her final chance at stardom.

As his victims' lives overlap in unexpected ways, Yusif remains unwittingly at the very centre. It is only as their revenge draws closer that we finally hear his own side of the story...

'[Yusif is] an enigmatic blend of idealism and cunning hypocrisy.' New York Times

Fathy Ghanem was a writer and journalist born in Cairo, Egypt in 1924.

He graduated from the Faculty of Law in Cairo University in 1944 and went on to work as a reporter for Ruz al-Youssef. He also worked as editor of Sabah al-Khair magazine and editor-in-chief at the al-Gumhuriya newspaper.

His other novels include The Mountain(1958) and The Elephants (1981). In 1994, he was recipient of the prestigious State Merit Award for his contributions to Egyptian literature.

Ghanem died in 1999.

Translated from Arabic by Desmond Stewart.

Desmond Stewart was a British author and translator born in 1924. He worked for many years in Baghdad, Beirut, and Cairo. He wrote a number of books about Egyptian and Arabic culture and history as well as several novels such as Early Islam (1967) and his trilogy, The Sequence of Roles. He died in 1981.