Deena Mohamed’s ‘Shubiek Lubiek’

An English edition of a brilliant Egyptian alt history comic about a world where wishes are real.

Shubeik Lubeik, a trilogy of graphic novels by Deena Mohamed, took the Arab comics world by storm, winning Best Graphic Novel and Grand Prize at the Cairo Comix Festival; today, Pantheon Books releases a gorgeous hardcover omnibus English translation:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/606934/shubeik-lubeik-by-deena-mohamed/

The world of Shubeik Lubeik is an intricate alternate history in which wishes are real, and must be refined from a kind of raw wish-stuff that has to be dug out of the earth.

Naturally, this has been an important element of geopolitics and colonization, especially since the wish-stuff is concentrated in the global south, particularly Egypt, the setting for our tale.

Though the underlying wish mechanism is metaphysical, Mohamed plays out her worldbuilding in a very science fictional way, constructing an intricate — and skillfully deployed — set of social consequences for a world where wishes are a fact of life.

Indeed, it’s this science fictional trick of “in-clueing” (to use Jo Walton’s excellent critical term) that makes Shubiek Lubeik such a cracking, cross-cultural read: