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Quando cade la maschera

Identity and unease in modern society

Reading guide · website editors

Identity and unease in modern society

The review signed R.B. centres on a question: how are modernisation and psychological fragility related? The mask becomes a point from which to observe the distance between social identity and inner life. The contribution also distinguishes the first story’s tension from the possibility of hope offered by the second. An editorial reading places writing between cultures alongside this interpretation. For a comparison with the reception of the early works, the Barhume dossier also includes the 1996 Gazzetta article discussing both books.

These texts come from the author’s archive and include the available attributions and references. Short press extracts appear at their preserved length. Editorial readings are distinguished from signed contributions. English and Arabic versions translate the Italian texts collected here; external documents and scans retain their original language.

Archival text

The West seen through a different eye

R.B. · Literary criticism

Identity, modernisation and existential unease in the two stories of Ghonim's second work.

Translation of the Italian text held in the archive; not an original English contribution by the named author.

“On Carnival day, man abandons his conscience and false personality in search of his true image, putting on the mask through which his possible reality or inner self appears.” (p. 35)

This is one of the gems scattered throughout Quando cade la maschera, the second literary work by the Egyptian Mohamed Ghonim. The book rests on two stories introduced by the poem “The Rain”: Quando cade la maschera, the first narrative, and La foglia di fico, understood as a medicinal plant, offer lovers of the sociopsychological vein lyrical and evocative pages.

The angular mental explorations of Il segreto di Barhume have been softened into a more fluid, engaging language. A question forms the book's foundation: are psychological fragility and stress the price of modernisation? And why do the postwar generations seem more affected by existential unease than their predecessors? In a few words the writer sums up this twin creation.

The first story tells of the conflicts arising in the mind of a sociologist faced with the confusion caused by the individual's loss of identity in modern society, where good and evil have become one and rules and penalties are no longer respected.

This pain is softened in the second story, which offers a last possibility of hope through the “thread” from which anyone who detaches and drifts away will merely bring about their own condemnation.

Quando cade la maschera is the West seen through a different eye, one that does not speak the language of efficiency and speed. Reading it requires patience and a willingness to put oneself in the place of others, of those who are different.

R.B.

Source recorded in the archive: Historical Ghonim.com archive

Consult the source
In this dossier

Editorial reading

Ghonim's fiction in Italian migrant literature

Editorial reading · Studies of Mohamed Ghonim’s fiction

A reflection on human relationships, inner tensions and balance between different cultures.

Translation of the Italian text held in the archive; not an original English contribution by the named author.

Ghonim's narrative works reflect on human relationships, inner tensions and the search for a balance between different cultures.

Writing in Italian becomes a meeting place: it preserves images and sensibilities rooted in the culture of origin while entering into dialogue with readers and with the reality of the country of arrival.

In this dossier