Ahmed Mourad - An Egyptian Writing Legend Can the Loss of Passion Defeat It?
Introduction
In 2017, Egypt's most prominent contemporary writer, Ahmed Mourad, received the State Award for Excellence in Literature. This award marked the defining milestone of his creative career, as his works before receiving it differ significantly from those that followed in both quality and artistic depth. In this article, I examine Ahmed Mourad's creative journey as both a novelist and a screenwriter—a journey that undeniably transformed both industries despite the sharp decline in the quality of the works he produced after receiving the award, perhaps because of losing his passion.
 |
| Ahmed Mourad |
About Ahmed Mourad
Ahmed Mourad is a contemporary Egyptian writer born in Cairo in 1978. He graduated from the Cinematography Department of the High Institute of Cinema in Egypt in 2001 and worked for several years as the personal photographer to the President of Egypt. His published novels include Vertigo, Diamond Dust, The Blue Elephant, 1919, Land of God, Season of Deer Hunting, The Bat Well Inn, The Sphinx, and the non-fiction book Killing for Dummies. He has also written the screenplays for The Blue Elephant (Parts I & II), The Originals, Diamond Dust, Kira & El Gin, and El Sett.
Ahmed Mourad's Near Prediction of the January Revolution
Ahmed Mourad began his writing career with remarkable strength through his first two novels, Vertigo and Diamond Dust. Although Vertigo was his debut novel, Mourad wrote it almost exactly "by the book." By "the book," I mean Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, arguably the most influential work ever written on dramatic storytelling. Mourad meticulously followed Campbell's Hero's Journey, from the Ordinary World to the Return with the Elixir.
Vertigo tells the story of Ahmed Kamal, a humble photographer who accidentally comes into possession of incriminating photographs exposing several corrupt government officials. He decides to reveal them to the public, but how can he do so without putting his own life at risk? Diamond Dust, on the other hand, clearly demonstrates the effort Mourad invested in mastering the craft of professional storytelling. The novel reached an exceptionally high artistic standard and is arguably his finest work in terms of craftsmanship.
Both Vertigo and Diamond Dust can almost be viewed as predictions of Egypt's January 25 Revolution in 2011. They explored the widespread political corruption that had become deeply rooted in Egyptian society. Furthermore, the protagonist of Vertigo ultimately resorts to the internet to expose corrupt officials, much like the young revolutionaries who used social media to mobilize support for the January 25 protests.
The two novels were also deeply connected to their historical moment. Government corruption was hardly new to Egyptian citizens, a painful truth to acknowledge. Against this backdrop, Ahmed Kamal in Vertigo and Taha El-Zahhar in Diamond Dust each choose to remain hidden, recognizing that anonymity is their greatest strength. Rather than attempting to overthrow the system outright, each simply throws a stone into a stagnant pond, to borrow Ahmed Mourad's own expression.
Ahmed Mourad's Escape from Reality
Between 2011 and 2012, following the success of the January 25 Revolution, politics dominated everyday life, and virtually every Egyptian had become a political analyst. During this period, Ahmed Mourad chose to distance himself from contemporary events by publishing The Blue Elephant, a novel almost entirely detached from the political upheavals surrounding him. In one sense, this was an intelligent decision. Historical events often require distance before they can be fully understood. At the same time, this choice greatly expanded Mourad's readership, as many readers turn to fiction precisely to escape reality and immerse themselves in unfamiliar worlds. As a result, The Blue Elephant became a phenomenal commercial success and remains Ahmed Mourad's best-selling novel to this day, despite not being his strongest work artistically.
Structurally, the novel is somewhat fragmented, with its episodes not always leading organically from one to the next, contrary to conventional storytelling principles. Yet this fragmentation effectively reinforces the uncertainty surrounding protagonist’s psychological and mental state. The novel also concludes with an unexpected ending that leaves readers with numerous questions and lingering doubts. Unlike Vertigo and Diamond Dust, however, The Blue Elephant lacks a clear thematic message. This may simply reflect Mourad's desire, and that of many readers, to temporarily escape the overwhelming realities of the political moment.
Cinema Enters Ahmed Mourad's Career
In 2014, Ahmed Mourad entered a new phase of his career, one that was considerably more commercial but somewhat less artistically profound. Cinema became a central part of his creative output. Although he had begun adapting Diamond Dust a year or two earlier, The Blue Elephant was the first adaptation to reach the screen in 2014, while Mourad was simultaneously writing his fourth novel, 1919.
Written in the aftermath of the June 30, 2013’s events, the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood from power, and the military's return to political leadership, 1919 continued Mourad's long-standing engagement with Egyptian politics. Having previously explored corruption during Hosni Mubarak's era in Vertigo and Diamond Dust, Mourad now connected contemporary events to the Revolution of July 23, 1952, and the story of Mohamed Naguib and the Free Officers. In doing so, he offered yet another striking parallel, as the relationship between Mohamed Morsi and Abdel Fattah El-Sisi bears notable similarities to that between Naguib and the Free Officers.
Rather than remaining within modern history, 1919 reaches further back into Egypt's past while maintaining clear parallels with the present. This deeper historical perspective demonstrates Mourad's intelligence as both a writer and a thinker. The novel revisits the British colonizing of Egypt, the unfinished revolutions of Ahmed Orabi and Saad Zaghloul, and shines a light on historical figures who have often been overlooked, including Ahmed Kira, Abdel Qader El Gin, and Dawlat Fahmy. Through their stories, Mourad highlights the immense sacrifices these resistance fighters made for Egypt's independence, as well as the betrayal, disgrace, and even death they suffered in return.
Artistically, however, 1919 did not reach the same level as Mourad's earlier works. The same can be said of Land of God, which followed it. In that novel, Mourad traveled even further back in history by revisiting the story of Moses and Pharaoh, attempting to challenge the widespread belief that Pharaoh was ethnically Egyptian. Despite their historical ambition, neither novel achieved the popular success of his previous works. Meanwhile, Mourad expanded his screenwriting career with The Originals, a film exploring how our state control over citizens through the culture of consumerism, while also adapting Diamond Dust for the screen.
The Peak of Ahmed Mourad's Career
This was followed by Ahmed Mourad's sixth novel, Season of Deer Hunting, which—unlike his two previous novels—achieved remarkable success and sparked widespread controversy. The debate centered on the atheist protagonist, whose philosophical questions drew sharp criticism. Mourad himself was accused of atheism and moral decadence, even though the protagonist's reflections on God, religion, and Satan were far from radical. They were hardly powerful enough to justify the fear they provoked among readers. Rather, the reaction revealed something about Egyptian society itself, which often seems intimidated by even the simplest and most modest questions.
Season of Deer Hunting is set in the 2070s, after the Mediterranean Sea has risen and submerged Alexandria, leaving Cairo's Zamalek district as an ancient relic. Despite its futuristic setting, the novel remains deeply connected to contemporary reality. Speaking about the novel, Ahmed Mourad explained that his research drew heavily on evolutionary psychology, a field that attributes much of human behavior—even behavior that appears civilized—to primitive instincts. As Mourad put it, despite all our technological and cultural progress, we remain fundamentally the same man and woman who once lived in caves. From this premise emerges the novel's protagonist, Nadim, who pursues a married woman with the relentless focus of a predator, dismissing her husband as "a pale mammal." Yet beneath his intellectual sophistication, Nadim remains, in many ways, the archetypal Eastern male. He believes promiscuity is embedded in women's nature, displays an almost transparent sense of moral superiority, and suffers from a profound emotional contradiction: he cannot bear to sleep with the woman he truly loves, nor can he imagine marrying the women with whom he finds sexual pleasure.
It is worth noting how difficult it is to sustain an entire novel around only a handful of characters, and even more challenging when the protagonist also serves as the narrator. Mourad deserves considerable credit for creating distinct inner worlds and intricate details for each character, allowing their conversations to evolve naturally and propel the narrative forward. His choice of first-person narration certainly contributed to this achievement. While this perspective typically produces shorter and more concentrated narratives, Mourad transformed it into a vehicle for extensive psychological exploration through Nadim's richly developed inner life. Furthermore, Nadim's ignorance of the true nature of "The Sanctuary," where most of the novel unfolds, together with Tarek's pursuit of his own desired woman, continually forces the protagonist to speculate, strategize, and reinterpret events, enriching the novel with additional layers of tension and detail. As mentioned earlier, these prolonged internal monologues also obscured many readers' understanding of Nadim's true character. One might even argue that the novel naturally filtered its audience, rewarding readers willing to engage with opposing viewpoints while alienating those unwilling to question their assumptions.
Mourad also deserves praise for resisting the temptation to conclude the novel with a dramatic religious conversion. Nadim does not suddenly become a believer, because human beings rarely undergo such instantaneous transformations. Likewise, Mourad deliberately refused to satisfy conservative readers by having his protagonist recite the Islamic declaration of faith at the novel's conclusion, a choice the author himself later discussed in interviews.
Between 2014 and 2018, Ahmed Mourad experienced an extraordinarily productive period. During these four years, he published three novels:1919, Land of God, and Season of Deer Hunting, while also writing three screenplays: The Blue Elephant, The Originals, and Diamond Dust. It was a body of work that fully justified his receiving the State Award for Excellence in Literature.
The Decline of Ahmed Mourad
The works Mourad produced after receiving the State Award, however, tell a different story. Although they enjoyed enormous commercial success—particularly in cinema, where The Blue Elephant 2 and later Kira & El Gin each became the highest-grossing Egyptian film of all time—their artistic quality declined dramatically. Personally, I found these works so weak that I could neither watch nor read them more than once. In fact, finishing them even a single time required considerable effort. The Blue Elephant 2 was visually spectacular but emotionally hollow. Nevertheless, its structural foundation remained relatively solid compared with what followed. Kira & El Gin, by contrast, was bloated and fragmented. The narrative lacks cohesion: events occur without sufficient motivation, unfold without meaningful progression, and conclude without delivering any substantial thematic payoff. The film's enormous commercial success owes much to the strength of its literary source material, whose underlying dramatic structure survived well enough to elevate the adaptation.
Mourad's latest screenplay, El Set, represents, in my view, the weakest cinematic work of his career. Unlike Kira & El Gin, it had no strong novel to support it. By this stage, Mourad appears to have reached the height of creative exhaustion. The screenplay reveals an alarming degree of artistic complacency. It constantly pretends to be saying something profound while, in reality, saying almost nothing at all. To call it a screenplay is generous. It is an exhausting experience—both visually and psychologically—a collection of disconnected, illogical scenes stitched together with a deceptive ending designed to convince viewers that they have watched a coherent film, when in fact they have not.
And as for Ahmed Mourad’s literary works from the same period—The Bat Inn and The Sphinx (The father of fear)—were stronger than the films but still significantly weaker than his earlier novels. Fiction possesses a unique ability to disguise its own weaknesses through elegant prose, sustained narration, and the author's complete control over every aspect of the reader's experience. Yet even these advantages could not conceal the shortcomings of The Bat Inn or the near-disastrous failure of The Sphinx. Both novels were also accused of borrowing heavily from earlier literary works. Ultimately, both books became showcases for Mourad's remarkable imagination and his talent for constructing fascinating fictional worlds. Like his recent films, however, they lacked meaningful substance. They began and ended without illuminating a single enduring idea in the reader's mind. Franz Kafka once wrote, "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us." Unfortunately, none of Ahmed Mourad's post-award works achieved that standard.
I struggled greatly just to finish movies such as El Set, and Kira & El Gin, and the novels The Bat Inn, while I was completely unable to read The Sphinx. I could never imagine returning to those works or rereading The Bat Inn again for the purpose of analysis or deeper reflection. In my opinion, these works fall below the threshold of serious criticism; some barely rise to the level of being worth consuming at all. Perhaps it is ultimately for the best that neither El Set nor The Sphinx achieved significant commercial success. One hopes the disappointment may encourage Ahmed Mourad to pause and reassess his creative direction.
Ahmed Mourad's Autobiographical Turn
Watching Ahmed Mourad's interviews during this weaker phase of his career reveals a noticeable shift in focus. He became increasingly preoccupied with discussing his own abilities and the effort he invested in his work. He also published his first non-fiction book, Killing for Dummies, in which he explains the writing principles he teaches and includes the screenplay for The Blue Elephant 2, then his most commercially successful film.
Ironically, the book's opening autobiographical section—where Mourad recounts the stories behind his works—proved to be its most engaging and compelling part. The remainder, devoted to writing instruction, feels comparatively boring. Perhaps this autobiographical impulse reflects what both Ahmed Mourad and his readers need at this stage of his career. Rather than expressing himself indirectly through increasingly hollow dramatic works, perhaps he now has more to say about himself than through fiction. It seems that after a decade of writing—from the publication of Vertigo in 2007 to receiving the State Award in 2017— Ahmed Mourad gradually lost his passion for dramatic storytelling. Now, as we approach 2027 and the twentieth year of his literary career, one question remains: Will Ahmed Mourad rediscover his creative passion and find his way back?
Despite everything, Ahmed Mourad remains an extraordinary writer and a phenomenon worthy of serious study. His commercial achievements are unparalleled in modern Arabic literature, and he stands as perhaps the finest example of the popular novelist that contemporary literature desperately needs. Since the death of Naguib Mahfouz, no Egyptian novelist has connected with younger readers on such a scale. Ahmed Mourad himself once observed that many writers after Mahfouz became preoccupied with winning literary prizes, losing touch with ordinary readers in the process, whereas Mahfouz focused first on the reader—and the prizes followed naturally. Ahmed Mourad embodies that same principle. Few writers understand their audience as instinctively as he does. If only he had not lost his passion.
Finished.
Join the conversation