PositiveForeign PolicyEach storyline unfolds in alternating chapters, a hallmark of Aswany’s multivocal style that conveys the tangled web of lives. And yet in another sense, his characters don’t read like actual, idiosyncratic, individual men and women ... Narrative energy flows mainly from debates between characters—or, in other words, from Aswany’s debates with himself ... Aswany’s hostility to Mubarak’s autocracy and support for Sisi’s gives away a searing inner conflict, of which The Republic of False Truths is a lively record. Aswany pulls no punches when criticizing the army, but he prefers the devil he knows over the one he doesn’t. Many in the Middle East like him think there are no great choices; it’s plausible, though disturbing, if they yield to cynicism. As for the novel, readers watch in horror as the Apparatus eats all the characters, making them choose between torture, complicity, or exile. The story ends on a hint of retribution, but one that, like the aftermath of the Arab Spring itself, merely repeats the cycle of blood instead of escaping it. Any happy ending, while still possible, has been deferred.
