Secret Society of Citizens

Author's name: Ashraf Al-Ashmawy

The heroes of this novel are unconventional characters, but we encounter them every day. They live in the space between reality and fantasy. They remained silent until the author untethered them to tell what they had been exhausted from keeping secret for many years, what hurt them and what made them happy, their dreams that needed no explanation and their ambitions that did not cost much. In his new novel, Ashraf Al-Ashmawy raises important questions about the value of truth and the power of falsehood on marginalized citizens trying to live, through an engaging narration of hopeful beginnings and confused endings, which led most of them to cross the bridge of ambition to crime out of a forced human motive. After each of them thought he was a member of a secret society that others did not know about, he discovered that he was just a number in a long line waiting his turn to collect his share, but at the same time he regularly pays others from the years and days of his life without realizing it.