
Otared
Mohammad Rabie
Translated by Robin Moger
Paperback

2025: fourteen years after the failed revolution, Egypt is invaded once more. As traumatized Egyptians eke out a feral existence in Cairo’s dusty downtown, former cop Ahmed Otared joins a group of fellow officers seeking Egypt’s liberation through the barrel of a gun.
As Cairo becomes a foul cauldron of drugs, sex, and senseless violence, Otared finally understands his country’s fate.
In this unflinching and grisly novel, Mohammad Rabie envisages a grim future for Egypt, where death is the only certainty.
Reviews
"A book of perverse and stomach-curdling violence that would have been unthinkable before the 2011 revolution, which inspired it."—Maria Golia, Times Literary Supplement
"Gritty."—New York Times
"Part early Ian McEwan, part Philip K. Dick, Mohammad Rabie's apocalyptic take on the Arab Spring in Egypt is an expressionist coup—urgent, disturbing, and eminently readable."—Youssef Rakha, author of The Crocodiles and The Book of the Sultan's Seal
"Reading Otared is by and large like having a hand grasping the back of your head, forcing you to look through photos from hell."—Marcia Lynx Qualey, The National
"More than just a portrait of a bleak future, this novel is of course a trenchant critique of modern Egypt. In Robin Moger’s deft translation, Rabie’s deployment of irony is skillfully rendered, a tool he uses to invert his country’s contemporary characteristics in an attempt to underscore the absurdity of his narrative."—Culture Trip

- October 1st 2016
- $17.95 / £9.99 / LE200
- Format: Paperback
- ISBN: 9789774167843
- Also available as: eBook
Related posts

In conversation with Mohammad Rabie
Born in 1978, Mohammad Rabie is the author of three acclaimed novels. His first novel, Amber’s Planet, won first prize in the Emerging Writers category of the Sawiris Cultural Award in 2012. He lives…
Read more
The rise of genre fiction
Once derided as inferior to more ‘serious’ literature, genres such as crime and sci-fi are saving the novel from what some maintain is its long-heralded ‘death’ as a cultural form. The novel, if criti…
Read moreRelated books

No Knives in the Kitchens of This City
In the once beautiful city of Aleppo, one Syrian family descends into tragedy and ruin. Irrepressible Sawsan flirts with militias, the ruling party, and finally religion, seeking but never finding sal … continued
more >
The Longing of the Dervish
At the close of the nineteenth century, freed slave Bakhit is let out of prison with the overthrow of the Mahdist state in Sudan. On the brink of death, the memory of his beloved Theodora is all that … continued
more >
The Time-Travels of the Man Who Sold Pickles and Sweets
Ibn Shalaby, like many Egyptians, is looking for a job. Yet, unlike most of his fellow citizens, he is prone to sudden dislocations in time. Armed with his trusty briefcase and his Islamic-calendar wr … continued
more >