Basma Abdel Aziz visualizes a dystopian Egypt in The Queue

Imagine having to wait in a seemingly never-ending line for consent from the government for your most basic needs, from getting a prescription filled to permission to remove a bullet from your body.

That's the premise of Egyptian journalist and psychiatrist Basma Abdel Aziz's literary debut, The Queue, which was recently translated into English. The dystopian novel imagines an unnamed Middle Eastern country after a failed revolution, where an ever-growing line stands between the population and their necessities.

Abdel Aziz, whose work is already being compared to Franz Kafka and George Orwell, was inspired to write The Queue after returning to Cairo and seeing a line in front of the closed door of a government building. 

"I started to ask myself, 'What keeps those people standing like this? Why don't they just move and come back another day? Why don't they just scream or shout or protest against this ignorance?' And this building was representing, to me, a symbol of the authority," Abdel Aziz tells Gill. 

As for the risks Abdel Aziz may face for writing and publishing this book — which could be seen as a veiled criticism of Egypt — she says the English translation may increase such threats, but that she's been living and working under these conditions for years.

"This will never stop me from writing," Abdel Aziz says, "I will keep writing until I'm in prison."