Al-Hout Al-Azrak: Leebet Al-Mout (The Blue Whale: The Death Game), by: Ahmed Zaki, (Cairo: Oktob Publishing House), 2019, pp254
This is barely fiction. It is more of a day-by-day register by a young horror novelist who is challenged to play Blue Whale, the game that caused a great number of suicides all around the world. His first attempt late one night took place after he made sure his wife and three children were asleep. Then he started to set up the game on a tablet device which he uses to enter the deep web, being very careful to keep his actual identity secure with several layers concealment.
Divided into diary entries, the book delves deep into the challenges of the game with the narrator giving insights into the sense of curiosity that’s driving him and his urge to discover the intentions of the game and to collect data to explain the high rates of suicide that result from playing it.
All through his journey with this game he was trying to outwit the game without putting himself at risk. On the tenth day he starts to notice that his device — in spite of being highly secure — has been penetrated by hackers and, helped by a computer scientist friend, finds out they are trying to obtain his bank information and other vital data that gives them power over players Ahmed Zaki is a young writer who has published three novels: Arwah Nagisa (Unclean Souls), Iblis Yulin An Nafsih (The Devil Announces Himself) and Mamlakat Al-Rab (God’s Kingdom).
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