Hunger

As with his earlier works, Mohamed El-Bisatie''s novel is set in the Egyptian countryside, about which he writes with such understanding. Episodic in form, it deals with a family Zaghloul the layabout father, Sakeena the long-suffering wife, and two young boys. The central theme of the book is hunger: the hunger of not knowing where one''s next meal is coming from, and the universal hunger for sex...