Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics

Dictatorship For Beginners Back In Print In Egypt

[issuu viewMode=singlePage width=420 height=284 backgroundColor=%23222222 documentId=121025223231-73d38f0a7bd04765b1c349a6e60c9390 name=bahgatos username=richjohnston tag=bahgatos unit=px v=2]

Hosni Mubarak is no longer president of Egypt. You may have seen something on the news about it. Or possibly on the Daily Show. And now the comic book Dictatorship for Beginners: Bahgatos, President of Greater Bahgatia. by Bahgat Osman is back in print.

Banned since the seventies, when Bahgat was exiled to Kuwait, it rather generically parodies the Arabic dictator, targeting the likes of corruption, nepotism, violence and idiocy in a rather cartoony fashion. Naturally it was incredibly popular. Naturally it had to be banned.

Bahgat was allowed back to Egypt in the eighties, but only if he restricted his work to children's books, and he died in 2001.

The book was republished in Lebanon through the nineties but unavailable in Egypt, until they discovered this little thing called the Internet and scanned copies were passed from person to person through the country, gaining a new, very appreciative audience.

And now, as par of a government subsidised publishing programme, it has returned to print, available for about twenty pence, or thirty US cents, from bookstores and news stands.

And the patron of this publishing programme? One Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of he ex-president. You could not make it up.

And with more and more accusations of Baghatos-like behaviour from the current Egyptian officials, it probably couldn't have come at a better time…

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!