The Prayer of Anxiety

Description

1977: Nag’ al-Manasi, a forgotten village in the heart of Upper Egypt, is cut off from the world by what its inhabitants believe to be a minefield of dangers. Its residents know nothing of the world except that a war between Egypt and Israel has been raging for ten years since 1967, and that the Israeli enemy is trying to infiltrate Egypt through the village, making it the first line of defense on the Egyptian border. Their only connection to the outside world is Khalil al-Khuja, the representative of the authorities and owner of the shop that prints a local newspaper called “The Voice of War.” He controls the buying and selling of all the villagers’ needs and products, and he also oversees the conscription of the village’s young men into the war. A meteorite or a satellite strikes the village—no one knows for sure—then a plague disfigures the villagers, including newborns. An unknown hand writes the sins people hide on the walls, and the sheikh of the mosque invents a new prayer, the Prayer of Anxiety, as the way to escape the plague and overcome the ordeal the villagers are enduring. Eight different characters recount the explosion and the events leading up to it during the harsh decade stretching from the June 1967 defeat to the meteor strike and the pandemic, their narratives forming a captivating mosaic of stories. The novel can be read as a narrative interrogation of the accounts of the defeat and the subsequent illusions of victory.