The train reader

A brief about the book: The journey of reality in "First Class" for imagination! I searched my pockets for the ticket, while an unexpected question persisted that I couldn't answer: Where is this train heading? I opened the bag and fiddled with its contents, and it seemed to me that I had forgotten it at the café. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, and I smiled at the idea that I lost myself on a train whose destination I do not know. In his latest novel "The Train Reader," Ibrahim Farghali presents a very exciting, suspenseful, and poetic story at the same time. The hero rushes to catch his train before losing his memory, only to discover that he has lost his direction and no longer knows where he should arrive or at which station he should disembark. At the same time, he is surprised that the train he boarded is completely empty of passengers, as if he has become the sole traveler in a world whose voyagers have departed, until he finds a single partner on the journey: a mysterious woman reading a strange book, who tells him she is reading it so that the train does not stop. At the height of his despair and amazement, "The Train Reader" begins to narrate what she tells him is her personal story that she has forgotten, and he finds himself witnessing a migration from south to north, its hero a boy who emerged alive from a grave, beginning a journey to escape his past... So, what connects these two strange, distant paths? This captivating and thought-provoking novel answers with brilliance. Ibrahim Farghali combines in this novel the literature of "the road novel," where all events unfold through a horizontal journey, with deep reflection on ideas and obsessions, skillfully blending two levels: one realistic and the other dreamlike, leaving us stuck in a lost distance, highly ambiguous, between what we think is reality and what we believe is imagination. Ibrahim Farghali (1967), one of the most prominent Egyptian novelists of the nineties generation, has published fifteen works including novels, short story collections, and travel literature, in addition to his notable contribution to young adult literature. He has received several important awards, including the Sawiris Award for senior writers twice for his novels "The Sons of Al-Jablaoui" and "The Temple of Silk Fingers," the second of which was also longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (Arab Booker) in 2016. The author's name: Ibrahim Farghali. Egyptian-Lebanese publishing house.