Set in cosmopolitan Cairo, this novel was written by Ihsan Abdel Quddous in 1969.
Quddous was shunned by the literati for many years, having been dubbed “the bedroom writer” for his liberal sex scenes and his exploration of female desire.
Almost all his work—novels, short stories, and scripts—is written from a woman’s point of view.
Considered lowbrow, his fiction wasn’t translated into English until 2021 when Jonathan Smolin published his translation of I Do Not Sleep. However, his work is a pillar of Egyptian literature and cinema.
Also important about Quddous’s writings are the veiled political themes in the wake of the 1952 Nasser revolution.
The novel is told from the point of view of twenty-one-year-old Nadia Lutfi, and it relays the story of her return from boarding school at 16, when she finds that her father, who raised her after her parents’ divorce, has gotten remarried. The beautiful Nadia plunges herself into the melodramatic business of separating the two.
She makes up a story of her stepmother’s infidelity to get rid of her. Later, when she sets her father up with a friend, she learns that the friend is only after her father’s money and already has a lover.
This novel is an important read because it provides a deeper understanding of the modern Cairene women of the 1960s.
As is true of many of Abdel Kouddous’s novels, there was a film adaptation: Sleepless starred major cinematic lights Faten Hamama, Omar Sharif, and Hind Rostom, among others
