Captain Ni'mat's Last Battle, a beautifully written novel about the challenges queer love poses to traditional notions of masculinity, introduces a captain who spends his retirement from the air force in a comfortable state of boredom in Egypt. But the sight of young people in the pool prompts a heavily symbolic--and erotic--dream. He becomes aware of his own forbidden desire for Islam, his "Nubian houseboy," and works to realize it in what at first seems like lustful experimentation. As his relationship with Islam develops, however, his lustful feelings transform into a love that threatens to shake the foundations of his life.
Captain Ni'mat is prone to grandiloquence and flights of fancy, which author Mohamed Leftah reflects in the poetic, imaginative prose, translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud. What initially seems like light satire of Ni'mat's self-importance soon becomes emblematic of the longings he has repressed in order to play the role expected of him in Egyptian society. The symbolism of his houseboy's name grows increasingly important as their relationship progresses, forcing Ni'mat to consider how the divine pleasures he experiences can truly be at odds with God's will. Ni'mat's obsession with Egypt's 1967 defeat at the hands of Israel also grows in importance. That loss lingers like a national humiliation, an emasculation that Leftah seems to argue has been met by a renewed, destructive emphasis on masculine norms and a trend toward fundamentalism. By its end, the novel becomes a powerfully sincere argument for individual desire in a collectivist society. --Hank Stephenson, manuscript reader, the Sun magazine