Sometimes described as the novel that predicted the uprising, Taxi takes readers on a rip-roaring ride through the daily frustrations of life in Cairo. By recounting the narrator's fictional conversations with dozens of taxi drivers, it tells the stories of Egyptians struggling to make ends meet as they navigate their way through choking traffic and monolithic bureaucracy, commenting on everything from video games to politics to the war in Iraq along the way.

Unlike some of

—Lin Noueihed