“We were told not to look beyond the wall and the Libyan Auxiliary Police made the rocky hills shake while they searched for us.” It is a raw, concise vision of an otherwise unsentimental reality. Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s ‘The Men Who Swallowed the Sun’ (2022) spins a furious, unapologetic tale of illegal immigration, discrimination, and erasure. Here is a book that not only attempts to understand the calculus of poverty and aspiration, but also the flawed politics that undercurrent North Africa. The story follows two Egyptian Bedouins who pry open the jaws of poverty and struggle to climb out. Both do so by making their way to Libya—where they are welcomed and harassed in equal measure, called “pissy little Egyptians” and “Gypos”, but still somehow kept safe by the rebellious, potty-mouthed locals of the Suq al-Khamis district in Libya. Hamdi, an avowedly autobiographical protagonist and narrator, is unable to make it past Sabha, Libya. He labors at a factory, wasting away between swings of moonshine and pulls of hashish. His parallel, a striking antihero who goes by many titles, namely the Phantom Raider for his reprehensible, “devilish” charm, manages to…
