Egyptian Sci Fi Novelist Nabil Farouk Dies at 64

Dr. Nabil Farouk (1956-2020), who along with Ahmed Khaled Tawfik popularized science fiction among young Egyptian readers, died today:

His daughter, Reham Farouk, announced that he had died of a heart attack.

Farouk, born in Tanta, Egypt in February 1956, is one of the region’s most popular and prolific authors of detective and sci-fi novels, having published more than 500 books.

He studied medicine, graduating from the Tanta School of Medicine in 1980. He began publishing his most popular series in the mid-1980s, and his books rose to popularity among Egyptian teens in the 1990s.

He is the author of a number of series, most famously Future Files, Impossible Man, and Cocktail 2000. One hundred and sixty books appeared in the “Impossible Man“ series alone, which is headed up by undercover agent Adham Sabry. It ran from 1984 through 2008.

Emirati writer Salha Obeaid said on Twitter that, as a child reader, she used to buy new books in “The Future Files” series every time the family visited Egypt, and that she believes it was this series “that led me to choose an electronic engineering major at university.”

Egyptian author Mansoura Ez Eldin added that she had all the releases in “The Impossible Man,” “The Future Files,” and “Cocktail 2000” series, “whose heroes were my childhood companions. “

Farouk also wrote for a number of newspapers, including El Akhbar, Sobian Wi Banat, and El Dostour. 

One of Farouk’s novels appeared in English in 2015, Midnight Sun, in a self-published translation by Husam Abu Sarris.