Harvest

Author's name: Youssef Ziedan

Like a lake, its surface calm but its interior turbulent and raging, this novel delves deeply into the events of the two years preceding the eruption of the Arab revolutions, which devastated several countries. When Baheer, a young Baha'i Egyptian from a middle-class family, meets Yara, a Lebanese girl of Druze origins, on the streets of Alexandria, he falls in love with her. He is overcome with anxiety that her family might reject him due to the disparity in their socioeconomic status. However, his worries are compounded when his close friend, Anu, appears, obsessed with the Anunnaki doctrine, which explains the origins of civilizations and the mysteries of human history. Yara is drawn to him and begins to fall in love with him. As Baheer seeks to save his love from collapse, the bombing of the Saints' Church on New Year's Eve takes place, devastating the lives of the three protagonists. “The Harvest” is a novel that delicately blends romance and history, while simultaneously raising philosophical questions—a hallmark of Youssef Ziedan’s novels—to make us reconsider the meaning of human existence, the role of fate in people’s lives, and the striking contradiction between human brutality and spirituality.