Shubeik Lubeik
-
- $18.99
-
- $18.99
Publisher Description
• Winner of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation •Eisner Award Nominee • Hugo Award Nominee
A brilliantly original debut graphic novel that imagines a fantastical alternate Cairo where wishes really do come true. Shubeik Lubeik—a fairy tale rhyme that means “your wish is my command” in Arabic—is the story of three people who are navigating a world where wishes are literally for sale.
• A Best Book of the Year: The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NPR
“The mythic qualities of Mohamed’s world bring our own world into sharper focus . . . Mohamed’s humor often feels like a protest, as do the thick and assertive lines of her drawings . . . The effect is gritty, brazen, and full of spunk.”—The New Yorker
Three wishes that are sold at an unassuming kiosk in Cairo link Aziza, Nour, and Shokry, changing their perspectives as well as their lives. Aziza learned early that life can be hard, but when she loses her husband and manages to procure a wish, she finds herself fighting bureaucracy and inequality for the right to have—and make—that wish. Nour is a privileged college student who secretly struggles with depression and must decide whether or not to use their wish to try to “fix” this depression, and then figure out how to do it. And, finally, Shokry must grapple with his religious convictions as he decides how to help a friend who doesn’t want to use their wish. Deena Mohamed brings to life a cast of characters whose struggles and triumphs are heartbreaking, inspiring, and deeply resonant.
Although their stories are fantastical—featuring talking donkeys, dragons, and cars that can magically avoid traffic—each of these people grapples with the very real challenge of trying to make their most deeply held desires come true.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mohamed (the Qahera webcomic) unspools the complexities—emotional, financial, logistical—that arise when magic meets corporate corruption and bureaucracy, in this splendid graphic novel. A cast representing diverse class backgrounds navigates a fantasy version of Cairo, where wishes are real and are released only for those who can pay their fees. Three characters attempt to change their lives when discounted wishes are on offer at a local kiosk, but their attempts get thwarted in telling ways. In the opening story, impoverished Aziza recently lost her husband, yet manages to save up for a first-class wish. A regulatory agency blocks her from fulfilment; sometimes "what stands between you and your wish could be a government employee with paperwork." The second piece peers into the internal struggle of Nour, an upper-class student felled by depression; sometimes what blocks a wish is indecision and simply "getting out of bed." Finally, in the most powerful entry, "nothing at all" stands in the way of a wish offered by the kiosk vendor to his friend, an old Christian woman, in a parable about finding transcendence by accepting limitations. Lithe, brushy black-and-white art is broken with color pages of infographic-style interludes. The volume is designed to be read right to left, in the Arabic style. This grand fairy tale announces Mohamed as a promising new voice amid a renaissance of contemporary Middle Eastern cartoonists.