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A cult classic in modern Arab literature, filled with black humor and satire, reissued in a new edition
“What this inventive and mad novel portrays is the split within Egyptian society, torn between religiosity and liberation.”—Robert Solé, Le Monde
"What is madness?” asks the narrator of Ahmed Alaidy’s jittery, funny, and angry novel. Assuring readers that they are about to find out, the narrator takes us on a journey through the insanity of present-day Cairo—in and out of minibuses, malls, and crash pads, navigating the city’s pinball machine of social life with tolerable efficiency.
But lurking under the rocks in his grouchy, chain-smoking, pharmaceutically-oriented, twenty-something life are characters like his elusive psychiatrist uncle with a disturbing interest in phobias. And then there’s Abbas, the narrator’s best friend who surfaces at critical moments to drive our hero into uncontrollably multiplying difficulties. For instance, there’s the ticklish situation with the simultaneous blind-dates Abbas has set up for him on different levels of a coffee-shop in a Cairo mall with two girls both called Hind. With friends like Abbas, what paranoiac needs enemies?
“This hip, innovative novel heralds the arrival of a significant new voice in Arabic literature.”—Banipal Magazine
“The millennial generation’s most celebrated literary achievement.”—Al-Ahram Weekly
“Outrageous, wild, outlandish, weird, and zany.”—Arab News
Ahmed Alaidy is an Egyptian novelist, screenwriter, director, and short-story writer. He has participated in international writing workshops at the University of Iowa and the University of Hong Kong, written for publications including The Washington Post, and his latest documentary has been released on Netflix MENA. His debut novel Being Abbas el Abd was translated into seven languages.
Humphrey Davies (1947–2021) was an award-winning literary translator of Arabic into English. He received a first class honors degree in Arabic at Cambridge University and a doctorate in Near East Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. He won and was shortlisted for numerous literary prizes, and was twice awarded the prestigious Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. He translated Naguib Mahfouz, Elias Khoury, Mourid Barghouti, Alaa Al Aswany, and Bahaa Taher, among others.