When Reem Abou Eid’s novel ‘Metropole,’ originally released in Arabic in 2017, appeared this year at the Cairo International Book Fair, newly translated into English, its presence carried the weight of survival. It is a story that had been written, stolen, litigated over for five years, and finally reborn in English for fresh readership.
“When the work was taken from me, it felt like a part of my soul was stolen,” Abou Eid told Egyptian Streets.
Abou Eid is a novelist, screenwriter, and a member of the General Syndicate of the Egyptian Writers’ Union. She began writing in the early 2000s, first publishing a poetry collection, Zat Holm (The One With a Dream, 2006), before moving steadily toward prose and fiction. Over the years, she has built a varied body of work that includes novels such as Ala hamesh el ʿAsefa (On the Margins of the Storm, 2016), Tayf Aziz (A Dear Apparition, 2020), Leil w nay w amar (Night, a Flute and the Moon, 2023), and the trilogy ‘Metropole,’ 2017, ‘San Stefano,’ 2019, ‘Stanley’, 2019.
Yet ‘Metropole’ occupies a singular, special place among her books.
Abou Eid traces its origins to Alexandria, a city she describes as both muse and narrator. Whenever she was there, she felt as though the city was telling her a story. When she stayed at the historic Metropole Hotel, a feeling crystallized in her.
“From the first moment I entered, I felt I had been there before. As if the place recognized me,” she shared.
That sense of déjà vu, the feeling of having experienced something before, even for the first time, became the novel’s foundation. ‘Metropole’ uses reincarnation as a narrative bridge to move through Alexandria between two timelines: first in the 1940s, and then to the present day.
“I’ve always researched questions of the soul,” Abou Eid said. “Why do we feel we’ve known some people as soon as we meet them, but not others?”
The story follows two souls who meet across eras, probing whether love, memory, and recognition can survive time itself. Alongside the romance, the novel reconstructs Alexandria’s cosmopolitan past, populated by Greeks, Italians, Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and captures a social fabric that has largely vanished.
A fight for ownership
Abou Eid also adapted the novel into a film screenplay, her first, with production plans. In 2017, she submitted the script to Egypt’s Central Authority for the Censorship of Works of Art (CACWA) and registered the intellectual property.
A year later, she watched in shock as a Ramadan television series, Ikhtifa’ (Disappearance, 2018), aired with what she said were identical plotlines, characters, timelines, and locations.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “The novel and the screenplay are essentially the same work. Suddenly, my story was on screen.”
What followed was a long legal ordeal. Abou Eid filed complaints in 2018 with the Ministry of Culture, the Cinematic Professions Syndicate, and eventually Cairo’s Economic Court. Over five years, multiple expert committees confirmed the infringement. A corruption case was uncovered inside the censorship authority, and a final ruling from the Cairo Economic Court declared that Ikhtifa’ had indeed been stolen from ‘Metropole’ and its screenplay. The employee responsible had a sentence, and her rights were claimed. Both her name and her novel were featured in the TV series credits across all online platforms.
After the ruling in 2023, Abou Eid submitted the screenplay to the Mamdouh El-Leithy Award at the Alexandria Mediterranean Film Festival, where it won second prize for unproduced films.
“It was ironic,” she said. “I had never written a screenplay before, and it was successful enough to be stolen, then awarded.”
The English translation of ‘Metropole’, published this year by Al-Maadi Group, was born directly from that victory. Abou Eid did not choose to translate it herself. The decision came from a friend, the literary translator Emme Bassyouny Cooper.
“She told me it was a gift,” Abou Eid said. “A way to celebrate that I had finally won.”
Translating the book into English, Abou Eid believes, matters as much as the book itself. “So many books from other cultures are translated into Arabic, but very few Arabic works travel outward,” she said, noting that translation allows English-speakers to experience Egypt’s culture.
Writing with honesty
‘Metropole’ also exemplifies Abou Eid’s literary philosophy. She favors clarity over ornament and exaggeration, sincerity over display.
“I don’t write to impress. I write in correct, eloquent language, but without pretension,” she said. “What’s honest reaches the reader.”
True to herself, she writes about themes that run through her life. Abou Eid recalled writing the screenplay to a family film titled Fe Baytena Kalb (There Is a Dog in Our House, 2018) about how caring for a pet can reshape teenagers’ lives.
“Mercy, particularly toward stray animals, is part of being human,” she shared. While the project remains unproduced, it is close to her heart.
She lets her work unfold from her daily life and her being. When writing, she lets the story take its natural course in her mind, rather than on paper. When a work comes from within, it carries the creator’s unique fingerprint, which is a strong belief she holds.
“The idea imposes itself,” she said, sharing that in many cases, she thinks about a project for months before writing a single line. Her process is slow and deliberate, as she waits for inspiration to find her.
“It becomes truthful. An original,” Abou Eid said, explaining that her success formula is when the reader knows the author of the book without looking at its cover. “When a reader feels a feeling that lasts, that touches them, that is success for me as a writer.”
Abou Eid is currently drafting a new novel, while ‘Metropole,’ a story of personal triumph to restore what was nearly erased, finds new readers abroad.
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