In the Spider's Room

A sensitive and courageous account of life as a gay man in Egypt and Winner of the 2019 Prix de la Littérature Arabe

Hani was out for an evening stroll near Cairo's Tahrir Square when a heavy hand landed on his shoulder. An informant had identified him, and he was thrown into the back of a police truck. There began a seven-month nightmare as he was swept up, along with fifty other men, in the infamous Queen Boat affair that targeted Egypt's gay community.

Finally free, but traumatized into speechlessness, Hani writes down the events of his life--his first sexual desires, his relationship with his mother, his marriage of convenience, and his passion for Abdel Aziz, the only man he ever truly loved.

In the Spider's Room is a bold tale of sexuality and persecution in contemporary Egypt.


About the Author
Born in 1977, Muhammad Abdelnabi is the author of two novels and four short-story collections. His The Ghost of Anton Chekov won first prize in the Emerging Writers category of the Sawiris Cultural Award for short-story collections in 2011. In the Spider's Room was awarded the 2019 Prix de la Littérature Arabe, was shortlisted for the 2017 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and was joint winner of the 2017 Sawiris Cultural Award for novels in the Emerging Writers category. He lives near Banha in Egypt.

Translator of the winning novel in the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and twice winner of the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, Jonathan Wright was formerly the Reuters bureau chief in Cairo. He has translated Alaa Al Aswany, Youssef Ziedan, and Hassan Blassim. He lives in London, UK.