He does that through three novellas that blend social realism, satire, and dark absurdity, though not all are equally convincing.
Mawaleed Hadeeket Al-Hayawan (Zoo Born), Ashraf El-Ashmawy, Al-Dar Al-Masriah Al-Lubnaniah Publishing, Cairo, 2024, pp.255
In A Cabin with No Sea View, the opening novella in of the Zoo Born trilogy, El-Ashmawy portrays a lower-middle-class family in Imbaba. Through the experiences of Aref, an orphaned teenager who moves in with his grandparents alongside his elder sister Hayat after their mother's death from cancer, the author gradually exposes the secrets and contradictions of this social milieu.
Aref's discoveries begin with a box of family photographs, which serves as an archive of his parents' lives. His father had died years after divorcing his mother. Among the contents are old newspaper clippings revealing that Aref's grandfather had twice been imprisoned on bribery charges, though the family had always referred to those periods as his "travels to Libya". The papers reveal that, because he shared the same name as the owner of the company where he worked, he had been persuaded to confess to crimes committed by his employer. Why the family preserved the incriminating clippings remains one of the novella's mysteries.
The grandfather is a stern patriarch who forces Hayat to wear the hijab and treats his grandchildren harshly. Hoping to secure a summer job for Aref, he takes him to visit his wealthy namesake, the head of a large group of companies. The businessman declines to offer employment but promises to fulfil any other request.
Aref asks for a place where the family can spend the summer. The magnate gives them the keys to his unused cabin in the North Coast resort village, where he no longer vacations, preferring Greece. He also provides an envelope stuffed with cash and orders his driver to take the family there and remain at their disposal.
Aref's dream quickly sours when he discovers that the cabin has no sea view. Worse still, he is repeatedly mistaken by the affluent holidaymakers for a beach vendor selling fresca (wafers).
The plot takes a darker turn with the arrival of Seif, the businessman's grandson, who invites Aref and Hayat to a party. Reluctantly accompanying his sister, Aref discovers that the youths engage in dangerous endurance games. Hayat collapses and dies after taking part.
His grandparents then try desperately to persuade him to confess that he supplied her with the anaesthetic tablets that caused her death, thereby saving Seif from prison in exchange for millions of pounds.
In one of the novella's most powerful scenes, Aref boards a boat with a group of strangers and throws the contents of the photo box into the sea. He even attempts suicide before being rescued by one of the passengers.
Unable to tolerate Aref's hesitation over the proposed bargain, his grandfather ultimately calls the police and has him arrested. Fifteen years later, Aref emerges from prison a broken man. The novella ends with him sitting on a beach, hearing a boy calling out, "Fresca."
The second novella, Pig Farm, is a satirical socio-political fantasy. Its protagonist, Fayez Hanna, a Copt from Minya, seeks compensation after an extremist group, with the acquiescence of the security forces, burns his pig farm and destroys much of his livestock.
His lawyer devises a diabolical scheme.
Fayez will fake his own death and reappear in Cairo under the identity of Sheikh Fayez Abdel-Nabi, a pious and charitable Muslim. Using a special blend prepared by Fayez that eliminates the smell of pork, the pair begin selling meat from the remaining pigs as halal beef imported from Argentina.
The enterprise flourishes, aided by low prices and the political circumstances surrounding President Anwar Sadat's temporary ban on locally slaughtered meat to curb soaring prices.
When State Security officers begin to suspect the sheikh's origins, his popularity among the public is so great that crowds prevent his arrest. Yet Fayez finds himself trapped in what he calls a golden cage.
His lawyer warns that extremist groups would destroy him if they learned his secret, while the authorities could imprison him for selling pork as halal meat.
His predicament deepens when he falls in love with a Christian woman whose father vehemently opposes the marriage. As sectarian tensions threaten to erupt, the security services relocate the woman's family.
Eventually, orders are issued to the lawyer to stop the illicit trade. He refuses and is killed in what appears to be an accident, while Fayez himself is slaughtered in his bed. He receives a grand funeral, but his brothers secretly exhume his body and rebury him in Minya.
Years later, the tomb of this "Christian" sheikh becomes both a Muslim shrine and a tourist attraction.
The title Pig Farm suggests that the entire country has become one vast pigsty, shaped by political corruption, religious extremism, and popular greed. Cairo itself is described as "an old ugly woman trying to look young ... feeding on fakeness and lying".
In the collection's third and title novella, Zoo Born, El-Ashmawy tells the story of Ismail, a young veterinarian born inside the zoo where his father worked as a lion keeper.
His father was killed by one of the lions, leaving Ismail to pursue modest dreams alongside his fiancée Aida: marriage and an apartment of their own during what newspapers under Sadat hailed as the "Year of Prosperity".
When Ismail applies for a veterinary position, the zoo manager instead offers him the job of elephant keeper. Soon afterwards, the zoo's lion and lioness die after being fed rotten meat. To conceal the scandal ahead of a visit by Sadat and his Kenyan counterpart, who had gifted the animals to Egypt, the manager asks Ismail and Aida to wear lion costumes and pose as the animals. In return, he promises them 1,000 pounds. Ismail imagines that the money will allow them to marry and perhaps even buy a car on instalments.
Humiliated by visitors while waiting for the official delegation, the couple eventually learns that the visit has been cancelled and that they will receive only five pounds each. Aida suffers a breakdown and attacks the zookeepers before being subdued. She, Ismail, and the zoo manager are arrested.
Because the episode coincides with Sadat's assassination, Ismail and Aida are accused of belonging to an organization seeking to overthrow the regime.
After two and a half months of interrogation, they receive suspended three-month prison sentences. Ismail comes to realize that he is not "alone in this miserable world. There are thousands of others like him waiting for their turn to be animals for a few days so as to live their lives humanly."
Throughout the collection, El-Ashmawy places his protagonists in situations beyond their ability to overcome.
This feels entirely plausible in A Cabin with No Sea View, where Aref becomes the victim of his own grandfather's machinations. In Pig Farm, however, Fayez's fate depends so heavily on improbable coincidences and conspiracies that the fantasy becomes less convincing. The transformation of his tomb into a shrine borders on the excessive.
The dreams animating Ismail and Aida in Zoo Born are strikingly ordinary: marriage and affordable housing. Although the novella contains a fantastical element vis-à-vis their agreement to impersonate lions, its social critique remains grounded in recognizable realities.
The three novellas contain a strong element of suspense. The first, comprising ten chapters, is the most successful. Pig Farm spans sixteen chapters, while Zoo Born unfolds across nine.
Zoo Born won the 2026 Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Literature. El-Ashmawy previously received the Katara Prize in 2023 for his novel The Secret Society of Citizens.
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