You Must Believe in Spring by Mohamed Tonsy
Mohamed Tonsy's debut novel is a remarkable piece of political fiction that examines the thorny legacies of the Arab Spring
Edinburgh-based writer Mohamed Tonsy’s You Must Believe in Spring literalises the thorny legacy of the Arab Spring's protests and coups, imagining an Egypt in the year 2034 still under the military rule that was meant to be but temporary. Written primarily in English with flashes of transliterated, untranslated Arabic, Tonsy's debut is a remarkable work of political imagination that refuses to bend backwards for a Western gaze, that holds at its heart the latent rage of the Egyptian people and stages a complex inquiry into what it means to live and die both in and for a changed, unrecognisable country.
In his author’s note, Tonsy writes of his own experiences fighting in the 2011 protests, and the physical damage it wrought on his career as an athlete. His protagonist Shahed curiously mimics Tonsy’s path; but if this is an autofictive piece it is at a disorienting remove, as Tonsy positions his character as a child of the very revolutionaries he himself was. It is one of the novel’s most compelling sleights-of-hand: there is a politics to futurity, Tonsy’s narrative understands, that can be ominous as well as hopeful, that can tell us as much about where we came from as where we are going.
Unapologetically dense and rich, You Must Believe in Spring pulls past and future into an uncompromising present, keeping the spark of revolution stubbornly alive.
Hajar Press, 13 Oct
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