Egyptian prominent author Ahmed Khaled Towfik (1962-2018) — author of more than 200 novels, including Utopia, tr. Chip Rossetti — died Monday:

The popular and prolific author, who died in the northern city of Gharbia, was just 55. According to the BBC, the author suffered a sudden health crisis.

Commonly called “the Godfather,” the popular blogger Zeinobia called Towfik the “Pop Culture godfather of a whole generation of Egyptians,” adding on Twitter that he was one of the few “intellectual figures and public figures in Egypt that believed we should mourn the Egyptians who died in # Rabaa and was not afraid of expressing this in public.”

Towfik’s books were particularly concerned with widening class divides, as evidenced in Utopia and other near-future dystopias. In an interview with BBC, Towfik had said his work became more pessimistic after January 25, 2011.

Zeinobia remembered him in a thread:

As a teenager, I was attracted to the teenagehood pop fiction written by Ahmed Khaled Tawfik #AKT and his book series "Metaphysics" starring an old cynical Egyptian physician Rifaat Ismail and Nabil Farouk and his version of James Bond a la Egyptian Adham Sabry — Zeinobia (@Zeinobia) April 2, 2018

oh and yes Ahmed Khaled Tawfik was not that sophisticated writer and he used to write pop sci-fi for teenagers but at least he was more honest, more respectful than big names spoke about justice and revolution in fiction and stood with injustice and dictatorship — Zeinobia (@Zeinobia) April 2, 2018

Towfik’s engaging novel Utopia, tr. Chip Rossetti, was a finalist for the 2012 Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards. Utopia, set in a dystopian Egypt of 2023, in many ways feels in many ways quite similar to (an exaggerated version) of Egypt 2010: The wealthy live in a secured compound on the Mediterranean while the poor live down in Cairo in polluted, broken-down, hardscrabble conditions.

Towfik also translated English-language science fiction into Arabic, including works by Ray Bradbury, Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov.

More: Towfik’s Goodreads page and blog.

Jackets from a few of his books: