Traces of Enayat

Ostensibly a biography, this book is more an intellectual auto-biography and detective story. The author, Iman Mersal, a poet, intellectual, and a terrific writer and story teller, becomes obsessed with a young Egyptian women who was also a writer and who died by suicide.

Through research and interviews she tries to uncover the biography of Enayet, shrouded by time in obscurity. The story unfolds in a spiral, circling around the core event of Enayat’s suicide. As layers of the story are uncovered, and the spiral circles deeper and deeper, it becomes clear that the protagonist is the author herself, trying to understand and come to grips with her own inner shadows.

Steeped in the intellectual world of her academic life and the show more political ideologies of her youth, Mersal attempts to box Enayat in, to uncover the “true” story of her life.. But her deep connection to Enayet’s spirit allows her and Enayet to break out from the constricting bounds of society, ideology and culture, and tell a moving story of human spirit yearning to create and be free. show less