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?

AHMED ALAIDY was born in 1974, studied marketing at Cairo University, and has worked as a scriptwriter on quiz shows and for the cinema, and as a book designer. He has written satirical stories for young people and currently writes a political comic strip for an Egyptian weekly. Alaidy has participated in international writers’ programs at Iowa University and Hong Kong Baptist University. He has previously published a long short story; Being Abbas el Abd is his first novel.

HUMPHREY DAVIES earned his doctorate in Near Eastern Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the translator of Thebes at War by Naguib Mahfouz (AUC Press 2003) and The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany (AUC Press 2004).

“The millennial generation’s most celebrated literary achievement.”   -- Al-Ahram Weekly

“The first glimmer of hope for a true fictional renaissance—an instantly rewarding read embraced by an unprecedented range of literary figures”   -- The Daily Star