Farewell Sonallah Ibrahim (1937-2025) , Read his famous 2003 award rejection statement

Egypt bid farewell on Wednesday to the celebrated novelist Sonallah Ibrahim, who passed away after a long struggle with illness.

Ibrahim was one of the last surviving figures of the 1960s–1970s literary wave in Egypt and the Arab world. Born in Cairo in 1937 to Ibrahim Mahmoud, a leftist civil servant at the Ministry of Education, he was exposed early to progressive political thought.

Despite his father’s leftist convictions, Ibrahim was given a strikingly religious name. Mahmoud found the name “Sonallah” (“God’s creation” or “Allah’s made”) in the Holy Quran and chose it for his son—unaware that it would one day become truly unique in Egypt’s literary and cultural life.

Sonallah Ibrahim studied law at Cairo University, graduating in 1959—the same year he was arrested during a crackdown on leftists and imprisoned for more than five years under Nasser. Yet, when asked who his favourite president was, he still named Nasser—despite being critical of the Nasserist era and having spent much of it behind bars. I will never fully understand this complex bond between Nasser and Egypt’s leftist intelligentsia, especially writers and poets who endured his prisons.

After his release in 1964, Ibrahim briefly returned to journalism in Cairo before leaving Egypt to pursue work and writing abroad. He first spent time in Paris and then moved to East Berlin, where from 1968 to 1971 he worked as an editor for the Arabic service of the German Press Agency (ADN). Immersed in Europe’s leftist politics and intellectual ferment, he absorbed the radical spirit of the 1960s, which left a lasting mark on his worldview and literary style.

In 1971, he left Berlin for Moscow on a scholarship to study cinema—an experience he later captured in his novel Ice. At the VGIK film institute, he shared Room 403 with Syrian filmmaker Mohamed Malas; together, they collaborated on Malas’s first film, inspired by the prison experience, with Ibrahim co-writing and even acting in their joint graduation project.

Young Sonallah Ibrahim with Malas in a very rare
screenshot from their film in Moscow
"Bab Misr" 

Returning to Cairo in 1974, Ibrahim fully launched his literary career. Known for his minimalist style and fearless social critique, he drew on his personal experiences, political convictions, and Egypt’s turbulent modern history to craft a body of work that challenged authority and laid bare the realities of life under state control.

Sonallah Ibrahim has written at least 14 full-length novels and novellas, beginning with That Smell in 1966 and ending with 1970 in 2020.

I believe Ibrahim truly entered the mainstream of Egyptian popular culture when his 1992 novel Zaat (Zaat: The Tale of One Woman's Life in Egypt During the Last Fifty Years) was adapted into a television series. The show, also titled Zaat, aired in 2013 with Nelly Karim in the lead role.

The series was a hit not only in Egypt but across the Arab world. Its success was immense. I still remember a family friend telling my mother that she saw part of her own life as a middle-class woman reflected in that series. For me, this was the moment Ibrahim became a household name, moving beyond the limited circles of leftists and the intelligentsia in Egypt and the Arab world.

If you understand Arabic, you can watch the TV series for free on YouTube. Here is the book in Arabic, where you can read and download for free legally, and its English translation.

Zaat became his most famous work, but before that, his most iconic and hotly debated novels within literary circles were The Committee (1981) and That Smell (1966).

His 1997 novel Sharaf was also ranked among the Top 100 Arabic Novels.

The story follows Ashraf—nicknamed “Sharaf” or “Honor in Arabic" by his mother—a university student who ends up in prison after committing a murder in self-defense. Inside the terrifying world of prison, rife with corruption, exploitation, and darkness, Sharaf eventually surrenders to the very dishonour he once resisted. The novel earned third place on the Arab Writers Union’s 2001 list of the best one hundred Arabic novels.

What many people don’t know is that Sonallah Ibrahim also wrote for children. In the 1980s, he published short stories for young readers—but they were far from typical children’s tales.

One collection, Sindbad’s 8th Trip and Other Tales (1989), opens with a story titled Palestine in the Heart, which introduces Arab children to the events that sparked the Palestinian revolution. The second story explores the history of the African American struggle in the United States under the title Why Am I Black?. The third tackles Lawrence of Arabia, portraying him as an agent of imperialism.

The cover of Sindbad's 8th Voyage and Other Stories
by illustrator Nabil Tag

One of the most important milestones in the leftist author’s life came in October 2003, when he refused to accept the LE 100,000 Cairo Arab Creative Writing Forum Award, granted by Egypt’s Supreme Council of Culture. In a dramatic scene at the Cairo Opera House’s small theatre, Sonallah Ibrahim stood before more than three hundred Arab and foreign writers to announce his rejection of the state literary award.

“I could never match Dr. Gaber Asfour in his ability to improvise, so I quickly jotted down a few words to express my feelings. Believe me when I say I never expected this honor, nor did I ever seek it. There are others far more deserving than I am: some are no longer with us, like the Jordanian writer Ghalib Halasa, the Egyptian Abdel Hakim Qasem, the Yemeni Muṭīʿ Dammaj, the Saudi Abdulaziz al-Meshri, and the Syrian Hani al-Raghib; others continue to enrich us with their creativity, such as al-Tahir Wattar, Edwar al-Kharrat, Ibrahim al-Koni, Mohamed al-Basati, Sahar Khalifeh, Bahaa Taher, Radwa Ashour, Hanna Mina, Gamal al-Ghitani, Elias Khoury, Ibrahim Aslan, Jamil Atiya Ibrahim, Khairy Shalaby, Fuad al-Tikrili, Khairy al-Dhahabi, and many others.

I was chosen by esteemed teachers and pioneers of creativity who represent a nation whose present and future are now at the mercy of the storm. At their head is my teacher Mahmoud Amin al-Alam, my companion in prison, from whom I learned—along with his comrades—the values of true patriotism, justice, and progress. This choice proves that serious and persistent work can earn recognition without the need for public relations, compromises of principle, or courting official institutions—institutions I have always kept my distance from.

But this award also carries another important meaning: it affirms a creative path that has always engaged with the immediate concerns of the individual, the nation, and the Arab world. This is the destiny of the Arab writer: he cannot turn away from what is happening around him, nor ignore the humiliation inflicted on the nation from the Atlantic to the Gulf, nor remain silent about oppression, corruption, Israeli aggression, American occupation, and the disgraceful complicity of Arab regimes in it all.

At this very moment, while we are gathered here, Israeli forces are overrunning what remains of Palestinian land, killing pregnant women and children, displacing thousands, and carrying out a systematic and deliberate plan to erase the Palestinian people from their homeland.

Yet Arab capitals welcome Israeli leaders with open arms. Just steps from here, the Israeli ambassador resides in comfort, and not far beyond, the American ambassador occupies an entire neighborhood while his soldiers spread throughout every corner of a land that once was Arab.

I have no doubt that every Egyptian here understands the scale of the disaster threatening our homeland. It is not limited to the real Israeli military threat on our eastern borders, nor to American dictates, nor to the weakness so clear in our foreign policy. It reaches into every aspect of our lives.

We no longer have theater, cinema, scientific research, or education. We have only festivals, conferences, and a box of lies. We no longer have industry, agriculture, health, education, or justice. Corruption and plunder have spread unchecked, and anyone who objects is humiliated, beaten, and tortured. A small exploiting elite has stripped us of our spirit. In such a terrifying reality, a writer cannot close his eyes or remain silent, cannot turn away from his responsibility.

I will not ask you to issue a statement of condemnation—such words have lost their power. I will not ask anything of you; you know better than I what must be done. All I can do is thank once again my esteemed teachers who honored me with their choice and declare my apology for not accepting this award—because it comes from a government that, in my eyes, has no credibility in granting it.”

After finishing his statement and declaring his refusal, and just before leaving the hall, Culture Minister then Farouk Hosny rushed to the microphone to respond. He sought to save face for his government before the international audience, stressing that the very political system Ibrahim had just denounced was the one that allowed him to freely voice such rejection—without fear of harm, threats, or being sent back to prison as had happened in the 1960s.

Late Sonallah Ibrahim 

To this day, Hosny criticizes Ibrahim, claiming that “he was striving for a glory he longs to attain.”

I tried to search if that event was recorded on video, as I am sure it was, but I can’t find it online.

Reading that statement in 2025 still strikes many chords. It feels as though it were written now rather than in 2003. It went on to become one of Ibrahim’s most widely shared and memorable works of the 2000s.

This was not the first time Sonallah Ibrahim had rejected an award. In 1998, he famously turned down the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, granted by the American University in Cairo. At the time, he argued that he could not accept an award exploiting the name of a celebrated writer like Naguib Mahfouz from an American institution whose government supported Israel’s occupation of Arab lands, suppressed the Palestinian people, and backed rulers who oppressed their citizens in the name of freedom and democracy.

May Allah bless the soul of Sonallah Ibrahim and grant patience to his family, friends, and readers who cherished him.

If you can read Arabic, all of Sonallah Ibrahim’s adult works are available for free through the Hindawi project.