The Men Who Swallowed the Sun

CO-WINNER OF THE 2022 SAIF GHOBASH BANIPAL PRIZE This gritty t ale of two men’s ill-conceived quest for a better life via the deserts of the Middle East and the cities of Europe is pure storytelling Two Bedouin men from Egypt’s Western Desert seek to escape poverty through different routes. One—the intellectual, terminally self-doubting, and avowedly autobiographical Hamdi—gets no further than southern Libya’s fly-blown oasis of Sabha, while his cousin—the dashing, irrepressible Phantom Raider—m