Few writers produce their autobiographies, most probably because much of their fiction already contains autobiographical elements. Charles Dickens draws on his often miserable and frustrating real-life experiences for David Copperfield and Great Expectations. George Orwell infuses the repressive, stifling and insecure atmosphere of preparatory school in Nineteen-eighty-four. However, Yehia Haqqi’s Khalleeha ala Allah (Leave it to God) takes the reader on an introspective exploration of his life and development as a writer. This is frank fiction, untarnished with vanity and attempts to present himself in a squeaky-clean image.
Yehia Haqqi was born on January 7, 1905, in the district of el-Sayyeda Zeinab, Cairo, to a middle-class family of Turkish origin. He graduated from the Faculty of Law and worked for a short period as a lawyer in Alexandria. In 1929, he joined the diplomatic corps and served in Jeddah, Rome, Paris and Ankara. He was appointed Ambassador to Libya, 1952.
He published his first short story in 1926 at the age of 20.
Throughout his writing career, he experimented with the short story, the novel, literary criticism, the essay and literary translation.
He translated world The Chess Story (which is also known as The Royal Game) by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, Baltagul (The Hatchet) by Romanian novelist Mihail Sadoveanu, and The Prodigal Father by Edith Saunders. He also participated in the translation of ‘Doctor Zhivago’ by Boris Pasternak. “Participated” because the Arabic version is the work of several authors as Zhivago is a sprawling work with intricate plotlines, unlike the 1965 film version, starring Omar Sherif, which was seriously truncated to fit 193 minutes.
His novel output includes such resounding titles as Om al-Awagiz (The Mother of the Helpless), Dimaa we Teen (Blood and Mud), Antar and Juliet, Sah el-noom (Wake up), Ihtigag (Protest), Aqrab Effendi (Mr Scorpion), Al-Bostagi (The Postman) and Qandeel Om Hashem (Om Hashem’s Lantern) in 1943.
Among his non-fiction works are Madrasat Al- Masrah (Theatre School) and Homoum Thakafia (Cultural Concerns).
He was a literary advisor to the Egyptian General Book Organisation in 1958 and from 1961 to 1971 was editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Al-Magalla (The Magazine).
In 1969, he won the Egyptian State Merit Award for his novel The Postman.
He was awarded the King Faisal International Prize in Arabic Language and Literature, Short Novels Category in 1990.
Acquainted with foreign literature in French, Russian, Italian and Turkish, Haqqi was one of those writers who could strike a balance between Eastern and Western points of view, which is probably due to his experience as a diplomat.
He died on December 9, 1992. He was 87.
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