The Queue

A Kafkaesque dystopia in an unnamed Middle Eastern city, where the population is gaslit and trapped by an authoritarian surveillance regime in a loop of bureaucracy. Everyone is endlessly queuing up at a gate, to receive various permits and certifications. Life in the queue becomes the new norm, and people adapt to it, form alliances and support networks, reminiscent of what happened at the Arab Spring protests. Yet the gate never opens, new laws continue to wear them down and conditions never improve.

I'd say the setup is brilliant, in its style of abstraction, yet it could have been a bit more tightened and heightened, by taking out some of the long-winded parts (mind, this is a short book, yet still) and pushing the abstraction even more towards a modern-day Kafka novel.