Ashbah Wataneya (Patriotic Ghosts) (Arabic, Paperback)

Dressed in black, and wearing green turbans on their heads, a mysterious group of men intercepts a group of friends making their way to a family villa on Egypt's North Coast. This strange encounter with what they can only identify as ghosts is just the beginning of a long nightmare for the friends, a kind of collective bad trip that brings out all the fears, lies and sins festering beneath the glossy and glamorous veneer of the rich upper-classes in corrupt, dictatorial Egypt. Alternating between horrific visions and narrative flash-backs, this suspenseful yet ironic novel reveals all the vicissitudes of a political system that has been fed, nourished and perpetuated by corruption, and where intelligence services and businessmen protect and serve each other to increase their respective powers. In the atmosphere this novel so brilliantly describes, this continuous quest to preserve power and increase wealth at any cost, everything can be sold, including name, pride and soul.