Monday 26/January/2026 – 07:39 AM
Writer Bilal Badr recently published his first literary publication, titled Mysterious Cavities – The Secret of Patient No. 17, by Dar Al-Yasmeen for Publishing and Distribution.
The collection of short stories includes nineteen stories that combine deep symbolism, realism, fantasy, existential and philosophical contemplation, and psychological and social anatomy of the self and reality, and the writer participates in them within the activities of the 57th session of the Cairo International Book Fair 2026, which continues until next February 3.
Bilal Badr participates in the book fair “Patient’s Secret No. 17”.
The collection is a narrative experience that penetrates internal worlds in crisis and cracked mirrors that reflect faces facing life with its weakness, silence, and hidden rebellion. It is not just facts or events alone, and the hero does not necessarily appear in the form of a savior, as much as he struggles with his questions with steadfastness and defiance.
Some of these stories take from the psychological recesses subtitles for stories that seem faint but contain intellectual layers filled with sorrow and questions, from a psychiatrist who lost his mind, people being extinguished and frozen at a critical moment in time, a woman collapsing in front of the mirror of jealousy and envy, and consciences that lost their vigilance but returned to life after it was too late.
The stories take us from the corridors of monotonous bureaucracy to ancient kingdoms to search in the dark corners in which we hide from our existential questions.
Mysterious cavities are an internal map of the soul in its moments of extinguishing and freezing, and a literary experience filled with sorrow and questions that gives the reader more than an echo of ambiguity, where nothing is clear and everything is mysterious but deeply painful.
