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Sayed Gouda's
Latest Book |
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 Serina
is a novel that meticulously illustrates the
mental trauma of the protagonist in Hong Kong.
In parallel with this political and cultural
background, the novel questions the usefulness
of medication in treating cases of madness. It
offers an alternative method that proved more
successful in treating many cases of madness. |
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Poem of the
Month: |
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 Joseph's
Sadness
Whenever life seduces me,
and comes to me with a
smiling face,
and sways playfully, and
displays her beauty,
and fastens the door and
says:
'I'm ready!',
whenever life seduces me,
and tears off my shirt of
tranquility,
and makes her move and my
heart makes his,
and he forgets his sadness
for an hour by doing that and this,
whenever life seduces me
so that I may forget,
memories wake and sadness
says:
'No more are you fit for
someone like me,
and no more
is someone like
me fit for you!'
1 August 2019
Translated from
the Arabic by the author |
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Critics'
comments about Sayed Gouda: |
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Stuart Christie (Professor of Literature):
In the end, Sayed Gouda's In the Quite of the
Night is worthier than we are. His poetry has
earned it, and it is only when one's poetry is
rated so highly that the pestering critic says,
as I do now, that I would like to learn Arabic
to understand Gouda's heart and soul better. His
poetry is among the best I have read in any
year.
On In
the Quiet of the Night |
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Birgit Bunzel (Professor of Literature):
With Serina, Gouda has not only proven
his ability to write with clarity about
developments in various cultural and political
backgrounds. He has done so while also giving
readers knowledgeable insights into the mental
trauma of an unreliable schizophrenic narrator.
The result is a novel that intertwines personal
and national suffering and calls for personal
and national responsibility.
O n
Serina |
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Bin-Isa bu-Hmalah
(Professor of Arabic Literature):
[‘. . . we can sketch the poetic identity that
floats in the book and represents the poet
himself. That poetic identity that has the same
characteristics of migration, supremacy, and
prophethood in an immoral, miserable, and
unpoetic world that represents the ugly face of
the world . . . [the poet’s] overwhelming sense
of prophethood, together with the image of a
crucified prophet, is similar to the image of
Jesus in its universal imagination. This is what
the poet proclaims in the headline that prefaces
his collection: (O my heart, crucified on the
pole of dream, / you look at them from above, in
renunciation / they see you crucified, / void of
will / but you see them an emptiness, / a mere
illusion)’.]
On Between a Broken Dream and Hope |
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Salah Elewa (Poet and critic):
Serina
is the third work of fiction by Sayed Gouda,
after his debut novel Once Upon A Time In
Cairo and his second novel Closed Gate.
And in this work as well Gouda proved to be a
cosmopolitan author who tries in this unique
fashion to reconcile a number of divergent
elements, topics and ideas. He manages to find
subtle underlying and unifying themes, tones and
commonalities in places that seem to have
nothing in common. The work’s power also lies in
the manipulation of conflicts in the real world
while using them as a backdrop or a metaphor for
the conflicts and tensions battling within the
main character… Serina is a cry against
oppression, a clear condemnation of violence, an
appeal not to accept injustice, and that acts of
repression shouldn’t be passed over in silence.
O n
Serina |
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Yeeshan Yang (Writer):
The writing in
Serina
is successful with two major external conflicts
- the coup taking place in Egypt and the yellow
umbrella movement happening in Hong Kong,
complicated and reflected by Serina’s internal
conflict. Usually novel writing requires a plot
or many plots, the mental health is the only
plot applied in Serina although it seems
like a real issue that the author is dealing
with. With her honest realism Serina is
an interesting book worth recommending,
particularly for intellectuals who want to
appreciate unpretentious realism.
O n
Serina |
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Bill Purves (Writer):
Those who enjoy poetry with rhythm and rhyme—mouldy
old figs who enjoy Kipling and Robert W.
Service—are these days often reduced to song
lyrics and the couplets of rappers and unlikely
to find anything there to their taste. How
refreshing then to learn that Sayed Gouda has
chosen to republish some of his Arabic poetry in
English.
On On
the Carriage of Memory |
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Jorge Palma (Poet):
Sayed Gouda, el poeta, no negocia, presenta su
mundo particular, su paraíso perdido, y con la
verdad (la suya, intransferible) se revela.
Desde su propia montaña, se declara abiertamente
en contra de la Injusticia, el desorden, en una
realidad dislocada; poesía en verdadero
contrapunto con un mundo vacío de contenido,
donde el poeta queda solo, anunciando sus
verdades frente a la incomprensión de un mundo
distraído, mayoritariamente carente de
sensibilidad.
[Sayed Gouda, the poet, does not negotiate. He
presents his own world, his paradise lost, and
with the truth – his own, non-transferable – he
reveals himself. From his own mountain, he
speaks out openly against injustice and
disruption in a disjointed reality; poetry in
stark contrast with a world devoid of substance,
where the poet is left alone, announcing his
truths in the face of the incomprehension of an
inattentive world largely devoid of
sensitivity.]
On 'On the Cross of Spartacus' |
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