The Harvest

Description

Like a lake whose surface is calm but whose depths are turbulent and ablaze, this novel delves into the events of the two years preceding the eruption of the Arab Spring, which ravaged several countries, leaving them in ruins.

When Bahir, a young Egyptian Baha’i from a middle-class family, meets Yara, a Lebanese girl of Druze origin, on the streets of Alexandria, he falls in love with her. He is consumed by anxiety that her family might reject him due to the disparity in their social and economic standing. His worries intensify when his close friend Anu, obsessed with the Anunnaki doctrine that explains the origins of civilizations and the mysteries of human history, appears after Yara becomes attracted to him and begins to fall in love with him. While Bahir tries to save his love from collapse, the Church of the Two Saints is bombed on New Year’s Eve, shattering the lives of all three protagonists.

“The Harvest” is a novel that seamlessly blends romance and history while simultaneously posing philosophical questions—a hallmark of Youssef Zeidan’s work—making us reconsider the meaning of human existence, the role of fate in human life, and the striking contradiction between human brutality and spirituality.