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BOOKS

Ashes of the Transients

What if natural laws suddenly shattered?. In this experimental speculative thriller, nature reclaims the earth, the moon competes with the sun, and shadows escape their hosts. Structurally constrained to exactly seven hours, the narrative follows a protagonist who must navigate a surreal landscape to answer a terrifying question: Has he already died and entered the afterlife?. Yasser Abdel Hafez delivers a brilliant, mosaic-like masterpiece that pushes the limits of contemporary Arabic speculative fiction, exploring climate collapse, human arrogance, and the fragility of memory.

Yasser Abdel Hafez

A prominent Egyptian novelist and journalist, Yasser Abdel Hafez writes conceptually daring fiction that frequently subverts reality to probe existential and dystopian anxieties. His debut novel Bimunasabat Al-Hayat (On the Occasion of Life) was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) in 2008. He later won the Sawiris Cultural Award (Senior Writers) in 2014 for Kitab Al-Aman (The Book of Safety), an intricate thriller about an archivist stealing confessions, whose English translation won the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize. His latest work, Ramad Al-Abireen (Ashes of the Passersby, 2022), ventures into speculative eco-fiction, imagining a world where nature aggressively reclaims the earth and alters the laws of existence, reflecting his continuous quest to dismantle and understand the core of human survival.

FEATURED BOOKS

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Years of Freckles

Cosmetic Surgery

Kush Ko

Asha: The Scarab and the Moon

Without a Last Chapter

The Lady’s Tavern

Various Ways to Kill Ants