Although Georges Henein (1914-1973) is recognized for his surrealist poetry and essays that placed him at the vanguard of the Francophone anti-fascist intellectual scene in interwar Egypt, his polemics spanning over four decades, demarcated the ethical boundaries of literature and the arts. Shortly after the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Henein publishes Prestige of Terror, a pamphlet in which he denounces how the Allies justified resorting to nuclear violence and terror in their “democratic war,” as he qualifies it. The paper examines the ways in which Henein articulates in this pamphlet an early diagnosis of the ethical fault-lines that continue to animate debates about western democracies. Furthermore, it argues that Henein’s critique post-Hiroshima will be followed by his rupture with European surrealism, engendering his consecutive exiles in and ultimately from Egypt.
