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The Queue, by Basma Abdel Aziz (Translated by Elisabeth Jaquette)
Melville House, May 2016 Recipient of an English PEN Translates Award, shortlisted for the TA First Translation Prize, & longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award In an unnamed Middle Eastern city, a centralized authority known as the Gate has risen to power in the aftermath of the “Disgraceful Events,” a failed popular uprising. Citizens are required to obtain permission from the Gate for even the most basic of their daily affairs, yet the building never opens, and the queue in front of it grows longer and longer. Citizens from all walks of life wait in the sun: a revolutionary journalist, a sheikh, the cousin of a security officer killed in the clashes with protestors, and a man with injuries The Gate would prefer to keep quiet. A very real vision of life after the Arab Spring written with dark, subtle intelligence, The Queue describes the sinister nature of authoritarianism, and illuminates the way that absolute authority manipulates information, mobilizes others in service to it, and fails to uphold the rights of even those faithful to it. |
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Critical Praise:
“The Queue… has drawn comparisons to Western classics like George Orwell’s 1984 and The Trial by Franz Kafka. It represents a new wave of dystopian and surrealist fiction from Middle Eastern writers who are grappling with the chaotic aftermath and stinging disappointments of the Arab Spring.” --The New York Times "Jaquette’s limpid translation achieves the spare, sterilized quality that medical prose and the communiqués of overbearing states have in common... Dystopia is the putrefaction of utopia; it is the promise of perfection turned sour... The Queue was written before the military coup that put Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in power, but it has proved prophetic." --Harper's “Abdel Aziz’s work draws on a rich lineage of Egyptian literary styles… She probes the gulf between official rhetoric and the stubborn inconvenience of real events, and delights in the convoluted absurdities that derive from them… The Queue shows us that resistance comes in many forms.” --London Review of Books “An effective critique of authoritarianism… People… will always find a way to control other people in one way or another, should it suit them. Perhaps with the publication of The Queue, the lesson will begin to finally sink in.” -- Carmen Maria Machado, NPR Books “Elisabeth Jaquette’s lucid translation of Abdel Aziz’s words makes visible to a new cadre of readers the way in which The Queue sets itself apart from other books that seek to explain the underpinnings of a repressive state.” --Music & Literature “Rendered adeptly into English by Elisabeth Jaquette, The Queue is equal parts dystopia, satire, and allegory… A distinctly Egyptian version of its Orwellian counterpart, much more real and all the more absurd for it… The nature of truth, its official invocations, its power and its danger, lies at the heart of this work.” --Los Angeles Review of Books "Powerful." --Wall Street Journal “[Abdel Aziz] brings her careful observations of power, pain and Egyptian society to a remarkable debut that′s been spun into fluid, persuasive English.” --Qantara "One of the most exciting post-Revolution novels written in Egypt.... [A] wonderful translation." --The New Inquiry “Full of mysterious and troubling detail…Abdel Aziz delivers a striking portrait of an authority that claims all power while rejecting all responsibility, that forces people to hear and speak untruths and to embrace their own oppression.” --The Nation "An Orwellian tale of a man living in an imaginary country under an authoritarian regime... a look into autocracy's numbing effects." --AP “Basma Abdel Aziz’s novel is not simply an exegesis on the state of her homeland, but a much more universal evocation of the relationships between hegemonic power and grassroots dissent. It feels both fitting and faintly tragic that she had to resort to the literature of dark fantasy to convey it.” --Toronto Globe and Mail “An arresting portrayal of totalitarian control.” --Library Journal “Although this is a novel, if you follow events in today’s Egypt, it’s not far from the truth. A brave effort.” --New York Post “A surreal version of modern-day Egypt.” --Kirkus “Captures a sense of futility and meaninglessness…Aziz ultimately suggests the worst while leaving the smallest space for hopeful interpretation, a fitting metaphor for Egypt after the Arab Spring.” --Publishers Weekly “Weird and wild…a Kafkaesque tale of a modern Egypt.” --BookRiot “[A] trenchant political fantasy…Mahfouz meets Orwell, with a particularly interesting look at the lives of Egyptian women from a variety of class backgrounds.” --The Forward “The sense of total repression that people feel from authoritative states is chillingly detailed…It seems hugely significant…that it’s a woman who has written this book, dared to point her finger in the eyes of authority in spite of what…are very genuine threats to her own well-being.” --Counterpunch “The Queue is the world we live in without letting ourselves to know it…the most chilling aspect of this novel is how normal it all feels…” --Okayafrica “Abdel Aziz has taken the reality of Egypt’s oppressive security apparatus and its impact on people’s lives and distilled it into a chilling Orwellian / Kafkaesque / Murakamian horror story…We need more novels like this.” --Speculative Fiction in Translation “The Queue…show[s] how an individual might use the prevailing narratives of religion and power around her to reconstruct a world that also aligns with a personal conscience.” --Image Journal “Insightful, multilayered.” --ArabLit.org “Timely.” --SF Signal “The discomfiting parallels to conditions in, especially, contemporary Egypt add a sense of urgency to the novel. A well-told—and effectively unsettling—story.” --The Complete Review "Aziz has gained a profound empathy for those individuals who are not revolutionaries... but dream of eventually doing the right thing.... Such nuances actually set her apart from the Orwellian standard." --AMRI "[Basma Abdel Aziz's] writings represent literature of the post-January revolution, which opened the door for tackling topics that had not been acceptable or available, like oppression by society or the regime." --Sonallah Ibrahim "The Queue represents the best in resistance writing. Both subtle and filled with wry humor this book will undoubtedly become a modern classic." --Diesel Bookstore, staff pick "The best part of The Queue is how it differs from most dystopian works... [it] does not present the reader with the obvious resolution, leaving us to wonder, if we found ourselves in such a situation, would we recognize it? If we did, would we choose to fight it?" --Changing Hands Bookstore, staff pick "This novel is like a 21st century Animal Farm, except the society Abdel Aziz portrays and characters' responses to the Gate's absurd decrees are eerily familiar." --Papercuts J.P. bookstore, staff pick |
Related Articles and Interviews:
Abdel Aziz: Los Angeles Review of Books Think Progress For Book's Sake MobyLives Jaquette: The New Inquiry Ploughshares MobyLives Mada Masr Excerpts: Words Without Borders LitHub |
