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Winner of the English PEN Translation Prize In the surreal but familiar perspective of modern-day Egypt, a centralized power known as the Gate has increased to ability in the aftermath of the Disgraceful Events, a failed popular uprising. Residents must obtain permission from the Gate to be able to care for even the standard of the daily affairs, yet the Gate never starts, and the queue before it grows longer. Residents from all strolls of life mix and hang on in sunlight: a groundbreaking journalist, a sheikh, a poor woman concerned for her daughter's health, and even the sibling of any security officer killed in clashes with protestors. Included in this is Yehia, a man who was shot during the Events and is looking forward to permission from the Gate to remove a bullet that remains lodged in his pelvis. Yehia's health steadily declines, yet at every move officials won't assist him, actively denying the very life of the bullet. In the end it is Tarek, the principled doctor maintaining Yehia's circumstance, who must determine whether to follow process as he has always done or to disobey the law and associated risk his career to use on Yehia and save his life. Written with dark, delicate laughter, The Queue identifies the sinister mother nature of authoritarianism and illuminates just how that absolute power manipulates information, mobilizes others operating to it, and fails to uphold the protection under the law of even those faithful to it.
