Maryam's Maze

Author's name: Mansoura Ez Eldin Publisher: Al-Shorouk for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2023 Literary classification: Novel Brief about the book: This novel continues the narrative approach that Mansoura Ez Eldin developed in her first short story collection, in which the line between dream and reality, illusion and truth, and imagination and lived experience dissolves, all of which are multiple and even integrated facets of her experience. But this approach gains here a unique dimension that makes it one of the most engaging novels of the new generation of female writers, concerning what she called the existential or ontological obsession, in which the heroine re-examines the vocabulary of her life to discover her identity or to comprehend the truth of her personal history. Dr. Sabri Hafiz — Egyptian critic «Maryam's Maze» addresses very central issues of the modernity experience in a large city like Cairo: loneliness, pollution, bureaucracy, madness, awakening like Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, in a world she can no longer recognize. Maryam struggles to regain any semblance of her previous life. It is a captivating book. Bolsuto Tengi — American novelist