The Nightingale’s Prayer

Amna’s older sister is killed by her uncle. The reason is unclear, but her mother tells her that her sister has dishonoured the family. Amna decides to seek revenge on the engineer who had seduced her sister. To get closer to her target, she starts working for him as a maid, but despite her vengefulness a strong bond between the two starts to grow.

Viola Shafik: “The Nightingale’s Prayer, adapted from a novella by Taha Husain, was surely meant to criticise traditional honour killing as part of a modernist critique of patriarchal traditions. Cast, in fact, into a female avenger story, it includes nonetheless the typical melodramatic repertory, its most recurrent tropes and motifs, such as almost unsurmountable class difference, merciless patriarchy, rape, seduction and punished desire. In line with that, it offers some of the unexpected emotionally disturbing twists so typical for the genre.”

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