The Sadaniyah - Youssef El Sherif

Murder, suicide incident, bankruptcy announcement, corruption stories, and sexual scandals in bulk. All these events are connected, despite their disparity, by a single background incident, mysterious and central, and its driver: the disappearance of a sheikh. It is like a curse, awakening sharp, pointed questions that cannot find answers, and the last veil of shame has fallen, revealing the shame of both the individual and reality itself, so that exposure has become everyone's fate. In his first notable novel, Yusuf Al-Sharif presents history and its consequences through a place that, at first glance, does not reveal what churns in its depths of earthquakes. "Al-Sanadqiya": a seemingly static, dull neighborhood, a place where silence is the language, with no movement; everything has settled into a state of stillness, and every word has, for decades, clung to a stability that resists upheaval. Al-Sanadqiya, at its core, is a picture of a whole nation struck by stagnation after the June 1967 setback, drowning in whirlpools, myths, and a state of calcification with no way to inject life into its corpse. It is a "Egyptian tale," where the cinematic language of imagery embraces a language of contemplation, analysis, and questioning, aiming to confront horrific and dangerous events that occurred after the disappearance of Sheikh Malik, not only in Al-Sanadqiya but throughout Egypt.