Slipping

Egyptian writer Kheir's enchanting English-language debut follows a journalist and a tour guide full of fantastical stories through a series of strange locations. The story unfolds in Cairo and nearby Egyptian towns during the Arab Spring, when grief-stricken, ennui-ridden magazine writer Seif, whose girlfriend, Alya, was recently killed during a protest, is assigned to accompany Bahr on excursions to unfamiliar places. Bahr leads Seif to an Alexandrian site where two streetcar trains narrowly miss striking them, and later shows him how to appear to walk on water at the Nile (it's an illusion, as an upriver floodgate's closure drops the water level). Along the way, Bahr tells of a befuddled soon-to-be groom who wakes in a garbage-ridden trench in an unfamiliar neighborhood after missing his wedding three days earlier, among other stories. Bahr's tales trigger memories in Seif--such as one about a man whose father dies and whose mother began receiving messages from the dead man, and another about flowers falling from the sky, which reminds Seif of being separated on the street from Alya before she was killed--and soon his sense of reality becomes increasingly blurred. Throughout, Kheir demonstrates a marvelous imagination and harnesses the magic of storytelling. Readers are in for a treat. (June)

Contemporary Egyptian life glimpsed through a magical realist lens. At the heart of Kheir's first novel translated into English are the meanderings of young journalist Seif and his subject, Bahr, an enigmatic collector of stories who has returned from several years in Europe to the Egypt he dismisses as a "shithouse of a country" in the wake of the revolution. As the pair visit Alexandria, where they engage in a daredevil game with passing streetcars and cross the Nile River on foot, Bahr spins out tales that blend concrete detail with fanciful elements, offering bits of his melancholy perspective on life along the way. Among them are the account of his arrest and brutal treatment after a street demonstration and an oddly charming parable involving a bureaucrat named Yehyia who becomes part of a government effort to waste citizens' time on purpose. Spirits and voices are recurring elements. There is the story of Ahmed, who is called upon to communicate with his late father to help his impoverished fellow villagers make a collective decision about whether to abandon their homes. Seif's girlfriend, Alya, possesses an unusual talent for re-creating any imaginable sound while Salaam, a young man with a persistent stutter, can only overcome it when he sings. Some of these fragmentary, dreamlike anecdotes are loosely connected, but those links are elusive at best. Then there are promising premises--like the one involving Ashraf, the young doctor recruited as a member of a medical staff at a private clinic whose work involves caring for a single patient, a wealthy businessman who has "resolved not to die"--that are introduced, never to be revived. For a Western audience lacking Kheir's cultural context, it's likely that many of these episodes will prove more puzzling than resonant. Despite a handful of evocative moments, a novel that fails to cohere into a meaningful whole. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Dawn was breaking as we climbed a rough track through wracks of scrub. We rose with the hillside, the Nile we had crossed like saints falling away behind us, broad and still and unobtrusive, its either bank lined with a thin strip of high palms and indeterminate herbage. And just as we were beginning to pant, there, suddenly, was an opening in the slope's rocky folds, scarcely large enough to admit a grown man, and in this opening, from within, fingers were beckoning to us. So we bent and entered. I had been expecting quiet, so the voices and blur of movement took me by surprise. When my eyes had adjusted to the light I saw a large gathering seated on the ground, most of them women and children, and caught the scent of incense in the air. Overhead the sun was rising shyly, preceded by its rays which, an expertly placed spotlight, fell against a bright and almost blank white wall facing us. Then the singing began. Praise songs for the prophet, prayers, God's names, all sounded echoless and somehow out of keeping in this ancient space, and then the women and children stopped singing, though their chants and charms continued to tremble in the air. Everyone was staring at the wall, as though they were at the cinema, and I stared with them. Here was the cure for those denied visions, for those whose supplications fell flat: the hidden wall was the secret these clustered hamlets never divulged. To strangers, nothing but a scored and pillaged ruin, but for these people, in these minutes between dawn and sunup, on those blessed mornings heralded by the full moon nights, you could, if you were a believer, and true, and full of love, see the one you sought. Look well and pray to the prophets and when your faith is brimming over then you will see them: the beloved. Clear as day or through a veil. Held by your eye, or embodied in your mind. They will greet you or guide you or reassure. Look first at the wall until your eyes go white with it, till they blink and tear. And then we began to hear muffled weeping around us, and the sound of women murmuring names, and as I sat there, cross-legged, a little boy crawled past my foot and I leant forward, and brushed his hair with my hand, and its coarseness astonished me. And I leant back against the wall. I told myself that if these people were able to see their departed here in this place, then how much sooner and clearer should be my visions of the dead? So I stared until my eyes burned, and I saw. I saw night and then, in that night, the form of a black dog moving through the darkness. It was followed by a second dog, then a third, and so on until there were five. Five dogs, now standing on a street corner I thought I recognised, and now on the move, a quick trot in formation like a military patrol towards the entrance to a building. An entrance which made me straighten where I sat. It was my old home, my place of play and sanctuary. I saw the five dogs pad up the stairs to the fifth floor where we'd lived, pause for a moment outside our apartment, and then I heard the first dog give a peculiar howl, in which he was quickly joined by the others. Then I remembered. I saw, and I remembered. Excerpted from Slipping by Mohamed Kheir All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.