Nose and Three Eyes

Ihsan Abdel Kouddous (Author, 1919–1990) is one of the most prolific and popular writers of Arabic fiction of the twentieth century. Born in Cairo, Egypt, Abdel Kouddous graduated from law school in 1942 but left his law practice to pursue a long and successful career in journalism. He was an editor at the daily Al-Akhbar and the weekly Rose al-Yusuf, and was editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram. The author of dozens of books, his controversial writings and political views landed him in jail more than once. A Nose and Three Eyes is his second book to be translated into English, and his first was I Do Not Sleep.Hanan al-Shaykh (Foreword by) was born and raised in Beirut. She is the author of The Story of Zahra, Women of Sand and Myrrh, Beirut Blues, and Only in London, which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. She lives in London.Jonathan Smolin (Translated by) is the Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies at Dartmouth College in the US. He is the translator of several works of Arabic fiction, including Whitefly by Abdelilah Hamdouchi, A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me by Youssef Fadel, and I Do Not Sleep and A Nose and Three Eyes by Ihsan Abdel Kouddous and the author of The Politics of Melodrama: The Cultural and Political Lives of Ihsan Abdel Kouddous and Gamal Abdel Nasser (forthcoming Stanford University Press). He lives in Hanover, NH.

”Breaking bourgeois taboos. . . . The Cairo of the 1950s and ’60s described in A Nose and Three Eyes is much different from the Cairo of 2024, but this novel is still relevant. It provides psychological insights into the struggles Egyptian women face in the discovery of their sexuality in Cairo society, which still maintains more traditional norms than the West.” —World Literature Today"The novel is filled with the yearning and poor choices of young love under oppressive social expectations, where the risks taken by men are paid for by the women in their lives. The translation by Jonathon Smolin is propulsive and flowing. Spanning the personal and the political, moving from Cairo to Suez to Beirut, this is an epic and enthralling romantic novel."—The Irish Times"Noteworthy"—Daily KosPRAISE FOR I DO NOT SLEEP:"[One] of the best new works from around the world"—The Irish Times"This 1950s Egyptian epistolary novel is told by a young woman looking back on the misery, patriarchy and middle-class life that surrounded her upon her return from boarding school."—New York Times Book Review"Fresh, unpretentious and irresistibly cinematic"—ArabLit"A classic of Egyptian Literature."—Raphael Cormack, author of Midnight in CairoPRAISE FOR IHSAN ABDEL KOUDDOUS:“He is like Stephen King, Anna Wintour, Lorne Michaels, J. K. Rowling, Alfred Hitchcock and Ta-Nehisi Coates loaded into one person.”—Mikey Muhanna, Ehkili: Books & Literature from the Arab World, afikra"Ihsan Abdel Kouddous was a great novelist, a pioneer journalist, and a progressive activist who long fought for women's rights and secular democratic values."—Alaa Al Aswany, author of The Yacoubian Building"Kouddous . . .wrote fiction about the Arab world way ahead of its time, pared down and powerful."—LitHub"Abdel Kouddous enriched Egyptian literature and cinema with everlasting works"—Egypt Today"Ihsan is an artist"—Tawfik al-Hakim, author of Return of the Spirit