{"product_id":"if-an-egyptian-cannot-speak-englishbooks","title":"If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2022 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the 2023 Arab American Book Award for Fiction\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eShortlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize\u003cbr\u003eShortlisted for the 2023 PEN\/Jean Stein Book Award\u003cbr\u003eShortlisted for the 2022 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize, a lush experimental novel about love as a weapon of empire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the aftermath of the Arab Spring, an Egyptian American woman and a  man from the village of Shobrakheit meet at a café in Cairo. He was a  photographer of the revolution, but now finds himself unemployed and  addicted to cocaine, living in a rooftop shack. She is a nostalgic  daughter of immigrants “returning” to a country she’s never been to  before, teaching English and living in a light-filled flat with  balconies on all sides. They fall in love and he moves in. But soon  their desire—for one another, for the selves they want to become through  the other—takes a violent turn that neither of them expected.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA dark romance exposing the gaps in American identity politics, especially when exported overseas, \u003ci\u003eIf an Egyptian Cannot Speak English \u003c\/i\u003eis  at once ravishing and wry, scathing and tender. Told in alternating  perspectives, Noor Naga’s experimental debut examines the ethics of  fetishizing the homeland and punishing the beloved . . . and vice versa.  In our globalized twenty-first-century world, what are the new faces  (and races) of empire? When the revolution fails, how long can someone  survive the disappointment? Who suffers and, more crucially, who gets to  tell about it?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Naga, Noor","offers":[{"title":"Paperback (Adult Fiction)","offer_id":44791849681120,"sku":"","price":13.2,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0330\/3125\/8248\/files\/BNCImageAPI_9326f465-e4bb-4021-bfd2-d052149f1942.jpg?v=1708010817","url":"https:\/\/agricola-street-books.myshopify.com\/products\/if-an-egyptian-cannot-speak-englishbooks","provider":"Agricola Street Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}