As a fourteen-year-old, Nasir was entranced by his father’s gift of a camera, finding in it the means both to possess beauty and to assert himself. Now a hack working for state television, Nasir meets Fatin, an independent woman older than himself who has escaped a suffocating marriage and is secure in taking what she wants from life. An affair begins that quickly pulls Nasir into a whirlwind of incandescent erotic and emotional obsession.
In a world of superficiality, materialism, violence, and sexual hysteria seen through the unforgiving lens of his camera, Nasir’s life is in limbo. A yearning for escape and a fear of loneliness propel him into a relationship in which he is at once enraptured and non-committal. The resolution of this volatile mix lies in a violent confrontation between repulsion and desire.
Black Magic was awarded the prestigious Sawiris Foundation Prize in Egyptian Literature in 2006.

Reviews

“Through the power of his imaginative black magic, Hamdy el-Gazzar resurrects slumbering art forms with a skill rarely seen in a young writer.”—Salah Fadl, Al-Ahram

“A new vision in narrative writing . . . . A novel of such elegance and intimacy is to be truly saluted.”—Mahmud Qurani, al-Quds al-‘Arabi