Psychological and physical deformities in “The Origin of Species” reveal the suffering of modern Arab man | culture

The novel “The Origin of Species” by the Egyptian writer Ahmed Abdel Latif, published by Hayat Publications in 2025, topped the short list for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, competing with five novels, including the novel “A Cloud Above My Head” by the Egyptian Doaa Ibrahim.

Since its title, which immediately recalls Darwin’s famous book on the science of evolution, the reader realizes that he is facing a dystopian world where fantasy merges with reality in a surreal atmosphere that combines the shadows of Orwell and the worlds of Kafka.

The novel revolves around three main characters whose destinies intertwine in the Cairo neighborhood of Manial, surrounded by a group of secondary characters who are united by ties of brotherhood, love, and marriage. The writer narrates this strange, fantastical world with the voice of a knowledgeable narrator, in a continuous narrative flow free of interruptions and commas, divided into seven sections that evoke religious symbolism inspired by Christianity and Islam.

The major theme of the novel emerges from a collective psychological deformity that afflicts the people of the neighborhood after they suddenly lose their limbs. The souls of the dead mix with the living, and ghosts and humans become companions of one fate, as if the dead whose graves the government decided to exhume were summoned to curse the world.

The novel depicted the distortion that befell the soul of the Arab person in the modern era as a result of oppression and backwardness, making him a damaged being with no salvation.

Epidemic engineer

The writer opens his novel with a scene of civil engineer “Ram” discovering that his hair has fallen out during his shower, in an opening that recalls the memory of the novel “Prayer of Anxiety” by his compatriot Muhammad Samir Nada, which opened with a similar scene. However, Ram is not just a man losing his hair; He is the engineer who was entrusted by the government with the task of demolishing the cemetery adjacent to the neighborhood, the cemetery that contains the remains of Nevin, his late wife, and his only love, whose shadow never stops accompanying him.

Since the demolition decision was issued, calamities began to strike the neighborhood like a plague: Ram lost his hair, Sayed Bachchan, the vegetable seller and government informant, lost the fingers on his hands, and Yahya Al-Hafi, the soccer player who dreamed of winning the World Cup, lost his toes.

Then the disaster expanded; People began to lose their limbs one by one. This prompted Yahya to open a shop that sold prosthetic limbs, as he found a profitable business in the disaster.

At the same time, the dead of the cemetery threatened with removal rose from their graves and their ghosts began to roam the neighborhood in a scene that had become familiar to residents. No one suffers from this ghostly presence more than Ram, who has been terrified of darkness and ghosts since his childhood and does not close his eyes unless the room is lit. In addition to the ghost of Nevin, who accompanies him, other ghosts are knocking on his door.

The epidemic left a deep-rooted unhappiness in the neighborhood’s soul. Smiles were stolen from faces and frowns were a permanent guest. The glaring irony is that the government men alone were not affected by the disaster. Their limbs are healthy and their authority is in place, and here they are decorating the neighborhood with Christmas trees to celebrate the birthday of the next president. Thus, people woke up to another world that they had never known, and they found no way to coexist with it.

Characters who lost themselves

Each of these three characters around which the plot of the novel revolves has a specific history that brought her to the present in which she lives now, and the loss of a part of her body linked to this history is an indication of the loss of her identity and her estrangement from herself. Fram lost his hair due to the sadness that resided in his soul over the death of Nevin and the death of Umm Yahya and Faten, and Sayed Bachchan lost the fingers on his hands. He was once a professional thief who had barely left prison before he entered it and paid two hundred pounds (about 4 dollars) to the officer as the price for his freedom. He eventually repented of the theft and decided to start over as a vegetable seller, but the authorities would not leave him alone; Instead of erasing his past, she bought his silence and chose him as her informant, so he had no choice but to submit.

As for Yahya Al-Hafi – and his name is significant – he was the football star in the neighborhood and filled the mouth of the neighboring neighborhoods that competed to attract him. Suddenly, he lost his toes; That member, who was his entire being, was the one who dreamed of one day wearing his country’s national team shirt in the World Cup. He now sits behind his shop selling prosthetic limbs, losing his dream and surrendering to his fate. The only one who seems to have survived all this devastation is Maryam.

Rebellion against oppressive authority

The novel reaches its climax when Ram decides to reject the government’s order to demolish the tombs, and the wrath of the authorities descends: he is dismissed from his job, tried, and crucified on Thursday, as Christ was crucified, to rise on the third day, Sunday, and go with Mary, who is waiting for him at the door of the tomb.

With this conclusion, full of symbolism, the surrealist novel lowers its curtain, having masterfully depicted the deep distortion that befell the soul of the Arab person in the face of oppression and backwardness, until he became a damaged being incapable of salvation.

“The Origin of Species” coincides in some of its themes with “The Anxiety Prayer” by Muhammad Samir Nada, which won the award last year, in its approach to human pain and the brokenness of the body as a symbol of the deepest existential break. Although the competition for the award this year remains open, “The Origin of Species” carries the artistic boldness that makes it a candidate worth waiting for.