Ahmed Naji – författare

Upon its initial release in Arabic in the fall of 2014, Using Life received acclaim in Egypt and the wider Arab world. But in 2016, Ahmed Naji was sentenced to two years in prison after a reader complained that an excerpt published in a literary journal harmed public morality. His imprisonment marks the first time in modern Egypt that an author has been jailed for a work of literature. Writers and literary organizations around the world rallied to support Naji, and he was released in December 2016. His original conviction was overturned in May 2017 but, at the time of printing, he is awaiting retrial and banned from leaving Egypt.Set in modern-day Cairo, Using Life follows a young filmmaker, Bassam Bahgat, after a secret society hires him to create a series of documentary films about the urban planning and architecture of Cairo. The plot in which Bassam finds himself ensnared unfolds in the novel’s unique mix of text and black-and-white illustrations.The Society of Urbanists, Bassam discovers, is responsible for centuries of world-wide conspiracies that have shaped political regimes, geographical boundaries, reigning ideologies, and religions. It is responsible for today’s Cairo, and for everywhere else, too. Yet its methods are subtle and indirect: it operates primarily through manipulating urban architecture, rather than brute force. As Bassam immerses himself in the Society and its shadowy figures, he finds Cairo on the brink of a planned apocalypse, designed to wipe out the whole city and rebuild anew.

"To fulfill this promise - ladies and gentlemen - I want each of you to close his eyes and think of one flaw, one weakness that he has not succeeded in getting rid of. Please, think for a few seconds and identify one problem that is affecting him Save your life.Bodies are falling in the streets of Cairo, while a young magician cannot sleep, anticipating a greater disaster, and his roommate is stuck in an incomplete electronic piece, but only Farah recovers until she finds an escape from this, etc Rab, to a territory in the form of a state, And a country without collective imagination, a woman giving birth to her mistress, green pastures for camels, and bigger golf courses, camel shepherds competing in building, three Magian stars. A city with a cracked moon, where children are forbidden, a camel emerging from a rock, and a thousand other wonders and wonders.In his third novel, Ahmed Naji builds a fictional world extending from Cairo to Sinai to NEOM from a failed marriage and a fragile love story. Its timeline grows from three thousand years BC to the near future, coming towards us violently to trample us."

It is truly a mercy that the electricity is cut off from this city, and the cameras and surveillance are absent, so I run with the crowds, smashing glass, and robbing Fifth Avenue stores. We nationalize their homes and inhabit them. We devour what is in their kitchens, and get endlessly drunk on the wine stored in their cellars. We live as rich people, as Americans, as stars, as the gods of Manhattan. All problems are solved not in the sky, but in the power station that feeds this city. True mercy is called "Blackout." A jerboa immigrant visits New York in search of a job opportunity, and ends up at a crossroads, between joining a secret religious group, or a diplomat''s wife inviting him to eat stuffed pigeons. A novel about two singers who dream of leaving Egypt.