Nominated for the longlist of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction Booker 2016 #Abjjad_Longlist_Booker_2016. The nightmare that terrifies you won't arrive; it's already here! Just lower your gaze slightly, and you'll see it hiding beneath the skin of everyday life, camouflaged behind its mundane details. Those details you voluntarily engage in to endure the other apocalyptic vision. It's as if we live life on two levels: one for passive awareness at a zero deviation, and another where you look through the wounds of consciousness to see hell existing. This is what Mercury tells us... Mercury is the closest planet to the sun and the hottest. By earthly standards, it is a piece of hell. It is also the name of an officer who witnessed the police defeat on January 28, 2011. More than a decade after those events, Egypt is under mysterious occupation, and the remnants of the old police lead popular resistance amid the ruined remnants of Cairo. A daily hell of random killings intensifies the scattered massacres following the famous January events. These are the imaginings and specters of the "counter-revolution" becoming a reality in a future nightmare. After "Amber Planet" and "Year of the Dragon," Mohamed Rabie continues in "Mercury" what he began specifically in his second novel with political fantasy bordering on inverted utopia, "dystopia" this time, in a breathless narrative transitioning between intensely obscure future worlds and a past always haunted by that hell.

Publishing house: Dar Al-Tanweer for Printing, Publishing, and Distribution

Number of Pages: 304

Year of Publication: 2015