What if you accidentally became the symbol of the most important political movement in the history of your society? Ramy, who is ashamed he has not performed any heroic action since the 2011 Revolution started, even when he tried jumping into the back of a police van to get himself arrested, returns to Cairo after a month-long self-imposed beachside exile to discover his face stenciled (along with the word “missing”) across walls all over the city. Prizes for Heroes is a satirical, touching reflection on what it feels like to have lived through the Arab Spring in Egypt. Through chapters that alternate between the present and the immediate and distant pasts, Ramy narrates his story in a starkly comic and sensitive expression of the confusing, heady, and mercurial emotions of the mass social and political upheaval of the time, from his perspective as a young man with the dreams of youth—dreams of marriage, love, stability— who finally grows up by living through an unprecedented historical moment. “A truly rich novel which falls under not one particular genre. The author was able to dodge all the cliches we heard and read about the Revolution.” – Nada El-Shabrawi, vlogger