The Author and the Authoritarian: Gamal al-Ghitani’s al-Zaynī Barakāt

In the early 1970s, Egypt experienced a period of major transformation. The sudden death in 1970 of Gamal Abdel-Nasser (known simply as Nasser), the charismatic leader of the 1952 coup d’état, national hero and defender of the Suez Canal against European powers, and pioneer of Arab nationalism, meant a sea change in the way the Egyptian state operated: from a tightly controlled state-socialist autocracy, proudly leading the non-alignment movement, to a looser police state, and eventually an America-friendly free market economy, under Anwar al-Sadat.¹ While the transition was never to a democratic regime, the atmosphere of surveillance and fear did