Women,writing and politics in Sonallah Ibrahim's That Smell and Notes from Prison

In That Smell and Notes from Prison, Sonallah Ibrahim engages literary and feminist discourses in his political narrative against the Nasserist regime and the culture of commitment (iltizam) of the 1960s. Ibrahim's antihero is a newly released writer who is faced with the challenges of overcoming his failure to connect with women and society, and find a motivation to write. He realizes that most readers, writers and critics are not in favour of his literature of exposé, which refuses to depict or treat the ugly reality as a beautiful one. In foreshadowing the 1967 defeat and the impotence of Arabs, That Smell and Notes from Prison warns of a prolonged cultural and literary decay should political corruption override basic human and women's rights in the Arab world.