The Egyptian Ministry of Culture announced the release of the first critical book about the late writer Sonallah Ibrahim, titled “Sonallah Ibrahim and Breaking the Dogmas,” included in the September 2025 issue of the New Culture magazine, issued by the General Authority for Cultural Palaces. This collective critical work, presented by Mohamed Salmawi, aims to shed light on Sonallah Ibrahim’s creative project.

Dr. Ahmed Fouad Henu, Egyptian Minister of Culture, stated that issuing this book is a deserved recognition of the value of an exceptional writer who left a prominent mark in the history of Arabic novels. He explained that the late writer had a great literary project combining national awareness and artistic honesty, and his works represented a milestone in Arabic literature with their boldness in confronting reality and revealing its contradictions.

Novelist Mohamed Salmawi described Sonallah Ibrahim as an unprecedented literary “phenomenon” who broke the prevailing literary and social dogmas for decades. He clarified that Sonallah moved away from traditional narration to make political and social issues the focus of his novels, where his works embodied economic reality transformations and their impact on daily life, as reflected in his famous novel “That Smell.”

The book includes a collection of critical studies by critics from different generations, including Ihab Al-Mallah, who praised Sonallah Ibrahim’s ability for narrative neutrality that opens a wide horizon for interpreting his texts. Critic Mostafa Al-Qazzaz, in his study “Realism and New Realism in Sonallah Ibrahim,” discussed how the late writer reshaped the concept of realism to reflect daily life details and link them to major political transformations.

Shahata Al-Haw presented a study titled “The Rhetoric of Explosion in Sonallah Ibrahim’s Narratives,” analyzing narrative segmentation techniques, montage, and the integration of documents within texts to create a narrative shock that reshapes the reader’s awareness.

The book concludes with a study by researcher Shawqi Badr Youssef titled “Sonallah Ibrahim: Biography and Journey,” reviewing Sonallah’s journey from his early politically direct works to his later novels that deepened his critical vision of reality.