Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Being Abbas El Abd: A Modern Egyptian Novel

Being Abbas El Abd: A Modern Egyptian Novel

Alaidy, Ahmed
Davies, Humphrey

Paperback

HumorGeneral FictionLiterary Fiction

Publisher Price: $18.95

ISBN10: 1649035675
ISBN13: 9781649035677
Publisher: Hoopoe
Published: Sep 1 2026
Pages: 144
Weight: 0.34
Height: 0.33 Width: 5.25 Depth: 8.00
Language: English

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?

1 different editions

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