“Had I chosen the wrong path?”

Hamdy El-Gazzar was born in 1970 in Giza, Cairo—“never having escaped the lesser-known back streets and secluded neighborhoods that dominate the light of every-day living, including novel writing.”

El-Gazzar’s stories carry a dangerous appeal—with the ghosts of Sartre and Camus caught in the margins. “Writing does not merely embody what we are, it also embodies what we wish to see.”

Seen from Tahrir Square: “There’s no going halfway in revolution. No going back. Listen: half a revolution means you die. It means everyone dies.”

The times are filled with sex—“used like some wild plant to treat our cuts and bruises, our sickness, our total ruin.”

El-Gazzar’s work includes: Black Magic, Secret Pleasures, and Our Revolution, Four Lines and The Women.

“I do not target anyone specifically with what I write. I target everyone at once.”

Hamdy El-Gazzar lives in Cairo.