The latest addition to my website is Mohamed Kheir‘s عباصلأا تلافإة (Slipping). This book is seemingly a book of separate stories but, gradually, they nearly all get some connection to one of the two main themes. The first is the story of Seif, a magazine journalist who has to show Bahr, an Egypian exile round Alexandria but it is Bahr who leads him around showing him a completely and recently abandoned village, killer flowers and a way to almost get killed by trams. Meanwhile, the other theme is the government’s attempt to reduce people’s spare time, as they might use it to cause trouble, by increasing bureaucracy and we learn of the people who get caught out by this. Other stories involve a massive private hospital for just one person and a man who is firmly controlled by his dead father. The stories are all highly imaginative, often involving death and/or loss and are enhanced once we make the connections.