Seek riches, but sell not your soul for 30 pieces of silver

No African short story writer has captured the futility of shortcuts to wealth better than Egyptian military-literary ace Youssef El Sebai.

His masterpiece, ‘Shobokshi and the Hundred Years’ revolves around a man who comes up with a clever way of getting stinking rich and pretty fast. Shobokshi’s stroke of genius comes with the realisation that most rich men in his village are old. The millionaire septuagenarians, Shobokshi reckons, are about to meet their maker and will need expensive caskets. Yes, their rich families will be ready to cough up top dollar for something exotic to be buried in.