BOOKS
Sleep Phase
LONGLISTED FOR THE U.S. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE (2025) & BY TWO-TIME SAWIRIS AWARD WINNER MOHAMED KHEIR.
After seven years in prison for an innocent joke, Waref Shaheen steps back into Cairo only to find a city transformed—a lush, surreal sanctuary of forests, lakes, and wandering wildlife. Yet inside this sparkling parallel reality, Waref carries a devastating existential wound: a stolen past he cannot reclaim. Navigating familiar Downtown streets that have acquired a strange new dynamic, he struggles to adapt to weird new occupations and reconnect with his pre-prison lover. Fusing magical realism with quiet emotional resonance, Mohamed Kheir delivers a haunting, beautifully crafted meditation on lost time, memory, and the fragile search for survival through love in a world that has moved on.
Mohamed Kheir
Born in 1978, Mohamed Kheir is among the most important
writers of the contemporary literary scene in Egypt. He is
the author of several collections of short stories and poetry
and one previous novel, A Closer Sky, as well as being a
prolific songwriter for the alternative music scene in Egypt
and Lebanon. His published works include Radio Spectres, a
poetry collection, which won Egypt’s Sawiris Cultural Award
in 2010, the short story collection Eyeblink, which won the
same prize in 2015, and now the most mature and affecting
of his books, Slipping.
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
