“Biografismo nell’autobiografismo di Maḥmūd al-Saʿdanī, maestro della satira egiziana”

Celebrated all over the Arab world as the master of Egyptian satire, Maḥmūd al-Saʿdanī, alias “al-Walad al-Šaqī” (the Naughty Boy), was a journalist, writer, playwright and author of various radio and television programs. This walking encyclopedia published around twenty books, including several historical and biographical texts, as well as a famous autobiographic pentad. In the third book of this series, al-Saʿdanī recalls the two years he spent in al-Qanāṭir prison as a casualty of the persecutions against the Egyptian left during the al-Sādāt era. Moreover, the writer englobes the life stories of six other prisoners within his autobiographic narrative. This study focuses on al-Walad al-Šaqī fī’l-siğn (The Naughty Boy in jail, 1981), trying to explain precisely the relationship between biography and autobiography in al-Saʿdanī’s oeuvre.