Reem Abou Eid’s ‘Metropole’ Finds New Readers After Years of Struggle

2026-02-07 - 11:16

When Reem Abou Eid’s novel ‘Metropole,’ originally released in Arabic in 2017, appeared this year at the Cairo International Book Fair, newly translated into English, its presence carried the weight of survival. It is a story that had been written, stolen, litigated over for five years, and finally reborn in English for fresh readership. “When the work was taken from me, it felt like a part of my soul was stolen,” Abou Eid told Egyptian Streets. Abou Eid is a novelist, screenwriter, and a member of the General Syndicate of the Egyptian Writers’ Union. She began writing in the early 2000s, first publishing a poetry collection, Zat Holm (The One With a Dream, 2006), before moving steadily toward prose and fiction. Over the years, she has built a varied body of work that includes novels such as Ala hamesh el ʿAsefa (On the Margins of the Storm, 2016), Tayf Aziz (A Dear Apparition, 2020), Leil w nay w amar (Night, a Flute and the Moon, 2023), and the trilogy ‘Metropole,’ 2017, ‘San Stefano,’ 2019, ‘Stanley’, 2019. Yet ‘Metropole’ occupies a singular, special place among her books. Abou Eid traces its... This content is for members only. Visit the site and log in/register to read.