Hani Abd El-Mourid

“The novel is, above all, a novel of questions — not only because it opens with the direct question: ‘How are novels written?’ but because it persistently seeks to raise a series of questions in the readers. These questions pertain to the act of writing and the challenges the protagonist faces in carrying on a mission that appears arduous and complex, yet they also compel us to pause and reflect deeply on our own relationships with the things and people around us.” Ibrahim Adel (Cultural critic)

“The fundamental epistemological question in the narrative, or for its characters, appears to be connected to the soul — or the self-knowledge that shapes one’s choices and direction. Perhaps this question is tied to the block often encountered in the world of writing, which in turn generates an intellectual pursuit of how to write the novel. Yet this ‘how,’ as seen in the text, is but a search for the soul — a quest for an alternative form of fulfillment.” Dr. Adel Dergham (Academic critic)

“What is seen through the various attempts in the novel reflects what may be called a 'novel within a novel', in the spirit of Brecht's 'theater within the theater'— breaking the fourth wall between audience and stage to disrupt alienation and spark awareness. This is precisely what Hani Abd El-Mourid does in this novel, alternating between the tangible elements of reality and those drawn from imagination.” Dr. Mohamed El-Sayed Ismail (Critic)
 
“Although the novel may seem elitist — starting with its title, which bears the name of a Greek poetess who died centuries ago, and extending to the protagonist’s struggle, which mirrors the inner tragedy of many creative people who drift far from ordinary lives and dwell within themselves. But the small details that make the story relatable, bringing it closer to people and making those people feel like the heroes of the story, and their fears are mirrored in its fears.” Nahla Karam (Novelist)
 
“This astonishing novel poses its haunting questions to writers, prompting them to choose whether to free themselves through writing or remain imprisoned by their fears; whether to paint their own picture or let others paint it for them; whether what they write persists — or goes with the wind.” Mahmoud Abdel Shakour (Critic)
 
“In My Dear Sappho, the novelist and storyteller Hani Abd El-Mourid, as in many of his works, is preoccupied with the search for a narrative that echoes the soul, and carries the author’s unique voice — a voice that gives life and the spirit of eternity to his words and novelties.” Dr. Azza Mazen (Critic)
 
“The novel – My Dear Sappho- published by the General Egyptian Book Organization, is cohesive in both theme and structure. It is deeply engaged with the creative complexities— how and when it is forms— and it addresses the dilemma of the subject of the creative work, or the necessary approach to writing.” Abdel Hadi Abbas (Writer)
 

“Kyrie Eleison is a captivating and bold novel, and it is rich with profound meanings blended with a universally relatable human experience. The novel is not without an attempt to innovate the form, using the cycle of time and space, the shifting of roles between characters, the deliberate incorporation of ambiguity, and the fusion of the core with the margin. Ultimately, it stands out as one of the best novels produced by young writers in recent times.” Dr. Ammar Ali Hassan (Novelist and critic)

“A modernist novel and a significant addition to the new Arabic novel. It represents a distinctive milestone in Hani Abd El-Mourid’s literary journey and for the new generation of novelists.” Ahmed Amer (Novelist and critic)

“A small-sized yet highly valuable text, delivered by Hani Abd El-Mourid with the skill of a seasoned novelist. His suspenseful prose leaves the reader breathless at times and tapped in the novel’s mysteries at others.” Dr. Afaf Abdel-Moaty (Academic)

“The adventure in Kyrie Eleison begins with an incursion into the external world, which in turn opens up the streams and springs of fluid narration that encompass every element. It’s a bold literary journey true to its author—and in my opinion, that’s how all great adventures begin, whether on paper or beyond it.” Mohamed Abdel-Naby (Novelist)

“Abd El-Mourid appears to have a firm grip on his tools. He maintains rhythm and manages to say much with few words. Despite the novel’s abundance of themes and references, it never slips from his hands and keeps a compelling level of suspense.” Mohamed Khair (Poet and novelist)

“Kyrie Eleison (the novel’s title) is a cry for help targeting us through a non-traditional narrative structure, placing us right from the outset in the presence of someone in distress, ushering us into an immediate emotional moment as we engage with the text.” Dr. Raja Ali Mohamed (Academic critic)

“There is no conventional plot in Kyrie Eleison that drives the reader to continue to the end, but instead, the novel's power lies in its strong narrative, vivid language, and authentic characters with real concerns and passing presences. It urges to a merging of identities between reader and character, without exploiting emotions. There’s no victory for the marginalized—unless we count the exposure of their misery as a victory. What’s noteworthy about Abd El-Mourid’s approach is that his portrayal of these wretched individuals’ humanity is subtle; he doesn't grant them a moral superiority or fall into the trap of sentimental empathy with a social condition that, however harsh, is accepted by those who endure it.” Dr. Abeer Salama (Academic critic) 

“Hani Abd El-Mourid’s Kyrie Eleison is a prominent manifestation in today’s literary landscape, reflecting an effective engagement with the margins—both spatially and symbolically.” Dr. Yousry Abdallah (Academic critic)

“Kyrie Eleison is a short novel (119 pages), bold, fast-paced, and shocking. The author fearlessly tackles the most sensitive and controversial topics: sex, religion, slums, conscription, the war on Iraq, superficial piety, unemployment, and human loneliness in this world.” Alaa El-Deeb (Novelist)  

“Language played a fundamental role in the success of this novel—unlike other works that addressed the marginalized using coarse, abrasive language, which only amplified the harshness of the depicted reality and alienated readers. Kyrie Eleison avoided that trap and succeeded because of it.” Mohamed Rafie (Novelist)

"In Kyrie Eleison, satire is not meant for laughter. It transcends humor to become sharp, poignant, and rich in irony and surprise." Mohamed El-Fakharany (Novelist)

"Kyrie Eleison is a prophetic novel that succeeded in anticipating the January 25th Revolution of 2011. Through its observations, and the issues it casts light on, the novel contributes to the spirit of that uprising. In my view, it serves as a translation of a crushed nation’s consciousness, awaiting its moment of deliverance." Dr. Hani Ismail (Academic critic)
 

“This exquisite novel is destined to win awards and forge deep connections with readers through its rich imagination and unforgettable characters. It is a novel about writing as salvation and therapy for loneliness, written with a wild, astonishing imagination. The stories tell us that life is a vast prison, and humans are pitiable creatures without imagination, without ‘Reem,’ and without the myths passed down from ancestors to descendants. Hani Abd El-Mourid is a unique and distinctive voice, who writes fearlessly like his protagonist.”  Mahmoud Abdel Shakour (Literary critic) 

“Between the act of writing and freedom, between mint and jasmine, between creativity and mastery, Youssef, Reem, and the world around them, Hani Abd El-Mourid weaves a distinctive fictional universe that draws on the marvelous, magical realism, fantasy, and ethereal glimpses of reality to create a singular, hybrid narrative entity. It carries the stamp of his unconventional creativity, capturing the obscure and the liminal—rarely grasped so vividly—in a world shrouded in mystery and secret relationships only perceptible to an artistic energy seeking difference and venturing into experimental narrative realms. It narrates life through the logic of our search for a renewed vision of it and adding magical touches to our approach with this existence.” Dr. Amani Fouad (Academic critic)

“In the novel, love and writing are intertwined in the protagonist's life, complementary yet haunted by another voice emerging in the narrative's folds; that is the Censor. The author dedicates several pages to this figure under the title 'Pages Inserted by the Censor,' allowing it to chase, besiege, and constrain the narrator under the pretext of protecting characters from the author who controls their fates. Through this axis, the author explores ideas about censorship in its various forms, but Youssef ultimately defeats the Censor, crafting his own myth amid 'the shadows of mint leaves that never wither or lose their scent.” Fayez Allam (Literary critic)

“The novel's structure is remarkably cohesive, in terms of the author's meticulous distribution of roles among the characters' voices and actions. While the father dominates the narrative space as the family's storyteller, expressing his desire for a poet to emerge, the mother occupies the realm of action. She gives Youssef the image from which the narrative takes off: a merging with cats. This is the scene Yusuf later reenacts in his bond with the cat he names Reem or Reema. Just like mint that grows wildly and without order, the text expands in all directions without ever losing its compass.” Dr. Sherine Aboul Naga (Academic critic)

“Youssef was never realistic nor did he embrace realism—this is the enigmatic part of the text that Hani Abd El-Mourid, with the craftiness of a skilled writer, leaves for the reader to shape, as if the reader were a partner in the storytelling. The reader may get involved in the text, becoming not just a passive receiver but an active participant whose imagination fills the gaps the author deliberately left. This is not merely the author's cunning, but a new narrative technique embodied in the fake crime that an astute reader will recognize as not a crime at all. The narrator's subjection to the 'Censor' is none other than Youssef himself, and the 'narrative' is merely his own obsessions laid bare.” Afaf Abdel Muti (Literary critic) 

“My overall impression of this novel is that it is a 'biography of consciousness,' beginning with the mythological consciousness of family roots and ending with aesthetic consciousness, passing through the metaphorical consciousness spoken by the family in its penultimate generation.” Sayed El-Wakil (Novelist & critic)

“The novel I Am the World by Egyptian writer Hani Abd El-Mourid explores the world of Egypt's isolated villages, connected to the wider world only through their protagonists' dreams. It tackles themes of oppression, helplessness, repression, and lost hope among Egypt's youth, written with sharp irony and portraying the effects of isolation on young people.” Faisal Abdel Mohsen (Novelist)

“Hani Abd El-Mourid pushes his protagonist, Youssef Abdel Jalil, to reconcile the divine and human conditions. He is the young man who reclaims his family history, recalling its figures, details, and afflictions as a son of this history, while also being the creator who reproduces this extended past in a way that makes him the master of its arrangements and possessor of its will.” Mamdouh Rizk (Literary critic) 

“Abd El-Mourid weaves the novel from simple events that mythologize ordinary people, turning the father, a tailor, into a talented actor and social reformer, and the illiterate grandmother into a healer resembling witch doctors in African folklore.” Hanaa Nasr (Writer & translator)
 
“The bases of I Am the World are not about affirming an idea but mocking ideas. Thus, 'absurdity' appears as another narrative game at its core, where destruction is an unconscious desire for construction; a build-up for another idea about the world and understanding it. Presenting multiple truths makes each truth fluid and easily dismantled. Absurdity, in both its ironic and nihilistic senses, is the foundation of everything in this narrative world and in this 'I' that claims to be the world.” Ahmed Abdel Latif (Novelist & translator) 

“This work is not a novel in the traditional sense but rather a narrative poem teeming with characters, memories, and imagined events—an orchestra conducted by the writer himself in a captivating, elegant, and at times sarcastic and playful style.” Dr. Wafaa Farouk Abdel Khaleq (Academic critic)

“The novel is rich with strange, fantastical events and situations where transformations occur in characters in various ways and dimensions, hinting at a distorted reality and a metamorphosis of its beings toward a degenerate existence marked by conflict, gratuitous death, sudden deformation, and an ambiguous fate.” Dr. Mohamed El-Masoudi (Academic critic) 

“Myth holds a significant place in I Am the World as the axis around which events revolve, starting with the grandmother who contributes to healing those around her with bizarre remedies—like oil in which she soaked mice or a cat she skinned, cooked, and fed to the sick. The grandmother becomes a link in a family that believes in myths, even if they are strange myths unique to the family.” Dr. Yasmine Magdy (Novelist) 

“At first glance, the novel's title might seem to carry hints of narcissism, but alas, it is the narcissism of the wretched who have lost everything and are left only with a Self tormented by bouts of pain and unfulfilled dreams. The title appears as a definitive answer to a question relentlessly posed by a mad reality: 'Who are you?' And the trapped humanity inside each of us screams: 'I am the world.” Hossam Wahban (Poet)

“I Am the World is an experimental novel that reveals a new kind of imagination and a striking ability to craft an alternative, astonishing narrative blending the real, the marvelous, and the dreamlike, the serious and the satirical, into a distinctive narrative fabric. It appears spontaneous yet uncanny, opening onto myths of Pharaonic and ancient folk origins, still embedded in the Egyptian psyche today, alongside myths invented by the narrator himself, filled with familiar and unfamiliar rituals. This novel features an aesthetic and visionary shift in narrative concepts and an innovative capacity to imagine what is yet to come while maintaining ties to what came before.” E'tidal Othman (Literary critic)

“Rare are the novels that deliver both pleasure and astonishment, gripping you until the last page and lingering in your mind and soul long after you close the book. I Am the World by Hani Abd El-Mourid, published by Al-Kotob Khan in Cairo, is a novel – with its world, characters, language, depth, questions, myths, and scenes, that holds you captivated.” Maher Mehran (Poet)

“Through enjoyment and companionship, imaginative play, and dealing with the extraordinary and the wondrous as facts whose laws we do not yet know, the text opens to the unknown, sailing us through stories, while the writer capture us, and we discover with him that stories here rise 'opposite to existence or they are existence' as Hanem, the storytelling mother, said. We also finally discover that Hani Abd El-Mourid aims, as the novel's title indicates, to trap the story in the net of a transparent, tightly woven text, and he succeeded.” E'tidal Osman (Literary critic)

“The novel begins with a game and ends with it, as if Abd El-Mourid is a professional hunter of writing ghosts in a short novel. With one word, he was to open the door of storytelling to become a charm that summons stories, characters, and imagination, not just meanings.” Samar Nour (Novelist)

“Attempting to Trap a Ghost' is a narrative expression of writing that draws inspiration from passion, myth, and rich imagination, in a harmonious narrative structure, by a writer who diligently, consciously, and truly dedicates himself to his narrative project.” Dr. Yousri Abdullah (Academic critic)

“Our popular heritage is full of stories of humans transforming into stone, especially after committing sins like ablution with milk. The attention of young writers to this type of transformation miracles and their utilization of them is considered a retrieval of inherent identity elements." Dr. Salah Fadl (Academic critic)
 
 

“Attempting to Trap a Ghost is a novel about storytelling, and for the storytelling. It is about love, pleasure, eccentricity, wit, intuition, and finely tuned rhythm. Storytelling is always a means of salvation, and a reason for life.” Mohamed El-Fakharany (Novelist)

“In his novel, Abd El-Mourid paints a world that fuses reality and fantasy. It is a dark comedy whose darkness does not strip off the strong heart of the belief that life, no matter what happens, is worth living, and that the word ‘stories’ is capable of bringing inanimate bodies into life.” Bahaa Jaheen - Al-Ahram (Journalist and literary critic)

“A small-sized, high-value text by the writer Hani Abd El-Mourid with the professionalism of a well-crafted novelist in an engaging style that makes the reader sometimes seek after the text and sometimes fall into the trap of its mysteries.” Dr. Afaf Abd El-Mouty (Academic) 

“Hani Abd El-Mourid presents a new narrative variation of 'Arabian Nights,' through two parallel dramatic lines, one fantastic (the story of Hanem, her husband, and the old woman), in which she tells strange stories to get back her family, in addition to the evocative language and the mythologizing of characters. The other line is realistic, but it has the facade of the fantastic due to its extreme eccentricity, where Uncle Younes and the boy Yamen exchange stories to triumph over life hardships and their dire reality.” Mohamed Abu Zeid (Poet and Novelist)

“Sometimes you read a text, and anxiety and fear hit you, or the text broadens your perspectives and outlook on life. In Attempting to Trap a Ghost, you feel a human sweetness seeping through the narrative, where a set of noble values are born from the situations, scenes, and stories that follow in the text without direct intentionality and escaping from rhetoric.” Dr. Amani Fouad (Academic critic)

“Through enjoyment and companionship, imaginative play, and dealing with the extraordinary and the wondrous as facts whose laws we do not yet know, the text opens to the unknown, sailing us through stories, while the writer capture us, and we discover with him that stories here rise 'opposite to existence or they are existence' as Hanem, the storytelling mother, said. We also finally discover that Hani Abd El-Mourid aims, as the novel's title indicates, to trap the story in the net of a transparent, tightly woven text, and he succeeded.” E'tidal Osman (Literary critic)

“The novel begins with a game and ends with it, as if Abd El-Mourid is a professional hunter of writing ghosts in a short novel. With one word, he was to open the door of storytelling to become a charm that summons stories, characters, and imagination, not just meanings.” Samar Nour (Novelist)

“Attempting to Trap a Ghost' is a narrative expression of writing that draws inspiration from passion, myth, and rich imagination, in a harmonious narrative structure, by a writer who diligently, consciously, and truly dedicates himself to his narrative project.” Dr. Yousri Abdullah (Academic critic)

“Our popular heritage is full of stories of humans transforming into stone, especially after committing sins like ablution with milk. The attention of young writers to this type of transformation miracles and their utilization of them is considered a retrieval of inherent identity elements." Dr. Salah Fadl (Academic critic)