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The Last Summer of Mr. Dipodoidea
Sulfur Editions proudly presents The Last Summer of Mr. Dipodoidea by Ghadah Kamal, a captivating and profoundly moving exploration of The inner world of man in an absurd realistic context in a world grappling with societal pressures, loss, and the search for meaning. This collection of interconnected stories delves into the lives of individuals navigating a dystopian landscape where dreams are suppressed, individuality is stifled, and the very essence of humanity is under threat. Through rich, evocative prose and surrealist imagery, Kamal paints a vivid portrait of a society teetering on the brink of collapse while celebrating the resilience of the human Unconscious.
The Last Summer of Mr. Dipodoidea is a multifaceted and thought-provoking collection of stories that will resonate with readers from diverse cultural backgrounds. Kamal's masterful storytelling and exploration of universal themes make this book a timely and important contribution to contemporary literature. It is a must-read for anyone interested in exploring the complexities of human experience in a world grappling with change, loss, and the enduring power of the human subconscious.
"The Last Summer of Mr. Dipodoidea" by Ghadah Kamal masterfully blends magical realism and surrealism, creating a captivating world where the boundaries of reality are blurred and the mundane is infused with the extraordinary. Magical realism is characterized by the introduction of fantastical elements into otherwise realistic settings, often presented matter-of-factly. Surrealism, on the other hand, seeks to liberate the subconscious mind, creating dreamlike and illogical scenarios that challenge conventional notions of reality. Kamal weaves these two elements together, creating a tapestry where the magical and the surrealist coexist and enhance one another.
The Last Summer of Mr. Dipodoidea is a multifaceted and thought-provoking collection of stories that will resonate with readers from diverse cultural backgrounds. Kamal's masterful storytelling and exploration of universal themes make this book a timely and important contribution to contemporary literature. It is a must-read for anyone interested in exploring the complexities of human experience in a world grappling with change, loss, and the enduring power of the human subconscious.
"The Last Summer of Mr. Dipodoidea" by Ghadah Kamal masterfully blends magical realism and surrealism, creating a captivating world where the boundaries of reality are blurred and the mundane is infused with the extraordinary. Magical realism is characterized by the introduction of fantastical elements into otherwise realistic settings, often presented matter-of-factly. Surrealism, on the other hand, seeks to liberate the subconscious mind, creating dreamlike and illogical scenarios that challenge conventional notions of reality. Kamal weaves these two elements together, creating a tapestry where the magical and the surrealist coexist and enhance one another.
224 pages, Paperback
Published December 20, 2024
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August 27, 2025
"On the seventh night of her confinement, the father was yelling at his wife, claiming that there was a foul smell in the house and that it was because of their daughter’s wicked thoughts. He insisted she burn some incense and stormed out. But no one else could smell anything. The mother’s heart pounded as she rushed to clean the house and prepare dinner. When her husband didn’t return, she went to bed.
“At dawn, the villagers gathered outside their house. The mother went outside, panic-stricken. They told her they had found her husband dead, his chest ripped open. A young man claimed to have seen a man wearing a mask with a frog on his head, dragging a long tail behind him, emerging from the canal. No one believed him, as he was known to exaggerate stories. The village doctor concluded that it must have been a gang of organ traffickers and that they were all in danger…”
Ghadah Kamal Ahmed, from ‘The Last Summer of Mr Dipodoidea’, Sulfur Editions 2024
‘The Last Summer of Mr. Dipodoidea’ is the debut book by Egyptian author Dr. Ghadah Kamal Ahmed. The book consists of five stories respectively entitled ‘The Last Summer of Mr. Dipodoidea’, ‘THE PHANTOM OF MELATONIN CITY’, ‘Tangerine’s Memory’, ‘The First Pages of Attis’, and ‘The man who ate the watch’. My review will consist in an exploration of themes, and will not discuss any elements of plot, or any kind of summary: this book resists any such inclination to summarise.
Kamal’s world of Cairo is deftly translated through any number of devices, ranging from the appearance of Egyptian deities and folkloric characters, to intimate descriptions of places and the people who occupy them, with every description both rich without excess, and precise. There is a decided elegance about Kamal’s prose - elegance in the mathematical sense - but the reader must step through the portal and surrender to the world she has created, embrace its logic and characters, and its refusal to be any of these things. This is a book about libidinal forces, powerful forces which submit to no institution or authority, but exist to create - in a Dionysian sense, being torn apart to be made whole, and all in triumphant ecstasy. This is unquestionably a Surrealist’s book, and brings to mind ‘The Story of the Eye’ by Georges Bataille, with its dual emphases on eroticism and transgression. Kamal’s world, though it may appear strange and unlikely, is however so rooted in concrete reality that she has made it exist through her capacity for observation and depth of feeling, alongside her sheer inventiveness and the confidence it gives her prose.
A salient theme of this book is a relation to the animal world through metamorphosis. Mr. Dipodoidea himself is a kind of desert-dwelling marsupial with long ears. Characters change their form, and one can’t help but see the Egyptian gods of antiquity, and their hybrid state between human and animal, as a double-image throughout the book. The earliest sculpture we know of is of a lion-man hybrid carved from ivory about 40,000 years ago, and found in Hohlenstein-Stadel in Germany. Becoming-animal, for humans, is one of the oldest and strongest roots of our identity. In Kamal’s book, that is no less apparent in the figure of Lorca - Kamal’s recently deceased dog, who appears in the book in different forms, and about which her most painful passages are penned.
The central motif of the book however must be that of freedom. An all-consuming freedom of the creative imagination, complete with stinging barbs for those in power who suppress freedom. The image of the dictator Keramboz, leader of the ‘Bat State’ who works to crush the licentious rebellion of the ‘Melatonin Phantom Group’ - a nod to Kamal’s own group of Surrealists - clearly leads us to think of the terrible events of the Arab Spring which swept through Cairo in 2010, and which form a psychological locus-point for the novel, driven by the twin engines of the erotic and of transgression.
About Ghadah Kamal Ahmed
Ghadah Kamal Ahmed is a surrealist visual artist, writer, and poet. She is a founding member of the Middle East and North Africa Surrealist Group and the Chrysopoeia surrealist union. She has also served as a coordinator for performances, workshops, and cinema screenings for surrealist exhibitions. Her work, which includes poems and collages, has been published in books such as "Wolves of the Moon," co-authored with Mohsen Elbelasy, and "Beyond Things." She is also an editor for the Surrealist Cities section of Room surrealist magazine and an editor at Sulfur Surrealist Jungle. She has contributed lyrics and voice to the film "Surrealist Poetry Night" (2022). She is based in Egypt and her work explores themes related to the subconscious, society, and the breaking of reality's boundaries. She has stated that surrealism helped her find freedom of expression in her art.
“At dawn, the villagers gathered outside their house. The mother went outside, panic-stricken. They told her they had found her husband dead, his chest ripped open. A young man claimed to have seen a man wearing a mask with a frog on his head, dragging a long tail behind him, emerging from the canal. No one believed him, as he was known to exaggerate stories. The village doctor concluded that it must have been a gang of organ traffickers and that they were all in danger…”
Ghadah Kamal Ahmed, from ‘The Last Summer of Mr Dipodoidea’, Sulfur Editions 2024
‘The Last Summer of Mr. Dipodoidea’ is the debut book by Egyptian author Dr. Ghadah Kamal Ahmed. The book consists of five stories respectively entitled ‘The Last Summer of Mr. Dipodoidea’, ‘THE PHANTOM OF MELATONIN CITY’, ‘Tangerine’s Memory’, ‘The First Pages of Attis’, and ‘The man who ate the watch’. My review will consist in an exploration of themes, and will not discuss any elements of plot, or any kind of summary: this book resists any such inclination to summarise.
Kamal’s world of Cairo is deftly translated through any number of devices, ranging from the appearance of Egyptian deities and folkloric characters, to intimate descriptions of places and the people who occupy them, with every description both rich without excess, and precise. There is a decided elegance about Kamal’s prose - elegance in the mathematical sense - but the reader must step through the portal and surrender to the world she has created, embrace its logic and characters, and its refusal to be any of these things. This is a book about libidinal forces, powerful forces which submit to no institution or authority, but exist to create - in a Dionysian sense, being torn apart to be made whole, and all in triumphant ecstasy. This is unquestionably a Surrealist’s book, and brings to mind ‘The Story of the Eye’ by Georges Bataille, with its dual emphases on eroticism and transgression. Kamal’s world, though it may appear strange and unlikely, is however so rooted in concrete reality that she has made it exist through her capacity for observation and depth of feeling, alongside her sheer inventiveness and the confidence it gives her prose.
A salient theme of this book is a relation to the animal world through metamorphosis. Mr. Dipodoidea himself is a kind of desert-dwelling marsupial with long ears. Characters change their form, and one can’t help but see the Egyptian gods of antiquity, and their hybrid state between human and animal, as a double-image throughout the book. The earliest sculpture we know of is of a lion-man hybrid carved from ivory about 40,000 years ago, and found in Hohlenstein-Stadel in Germany. Becoming-animal, for humans, is one of the oldest and strongest roots of our identity. In Kamal’s book, that is no less apparent in the figure of Lorca - Kamal’s recently deceased dog, who appears in the book in different forms, and about which her most painful passages are penned.
The central motif of the book however must be that of freedom. An all-consuming freedom of the creative imagination, complete with stinging barbs for those in power who suppress freedom. The image of the dictator Keramboz, leader of the ‘Bat State’ who works to crush the licentious rebellion of the ‘Melatonin Phantom Group’ - a nod to Kamal’s own group of Surrealists - clearly leads us to think of the terrible events of the Arab Spring which swept through Cairo in 2010, and which form a psychological locus-point for the novel, driven by the twin engines of the erotic and of transgression.
About Ghadah Kamal Ahmed
Ghadah Kamal Ahmed is a surrealist visual artist, writer, and poet. She is a founding member of the Middle East and North Africa Surrealist Group and the Chrysopoeia surrealist union. She has also served as a coordinator for performances, workshops, and cinema screenings for surrealist exhibitions. Her work, which includes poems and collages, has been published in books such as "Wolves of the Moon," co-authored with Mohsen Elbelasy, and "Beyond Things." She is also an editor for the Surrealist Cities section of Room surrealist magazine and an editor at Sulfur Surrealist Jungle. She has contributed lyrics and voice to the film "Surrealist Poetry Night" (2022). She is based in Egypt and her work explores themes related to the subconscious, society, and the breaking of reality's boundaries. She has stated that surrealism helped her find freedom of expression in her art.
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