Diana Matar

Diana Matar

Diana Matar

Diana Matar’s photographs have been exhibited at the Tate Modern, London; the Institute du Monde Arabe, Paris; the Museum ofContemporary Photography, Chicago; the Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi; theSan Francisco MOMA; and the Museum Folkswang, Essen

cover of the book I Found Myself

I Found Myself

by Naguib Mahfouz

Translated by Hisham Matar

With a contribution by Diana Matar

In his final years, the Egyptian master storyteller and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz drew on his dreams, combining the mystery of what we experience in the night with the deep wells of his narrative art. These last dreams, stunning poetic vignettes—now brought beautifully into English for the first time by the acclaimed writer Hisham Matar—appear here with dreamlike photographs by the famous American photographer Diana Matar, which both mysteriously rhyme with Mahfouz’s nocturnal reveries and, allowing the reader a chance to dream in turn, opening up the texts. These sketches and stories are tersely haunting miniatures. Recurring female characters may embody Cairo herself, especially one much-missed lover from Mahfouz’s youth. Friends, family, rulers of Egypt, and many beautiful women all float through these affecting, brief tales dreamed by a mind too fertile ever to rest, even in slumber. A tender, personal introduction by Hisham Matar, recollecting how he and his wife met Mahfouz in Cairo not long after the assassination attempt on the author, is moving and likewise indelible.

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