Karnak Cafe

2011-05-04 Fiction

Author : Naguib Mahfouz
Release : 2011-05-04
Genre : Fiction
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 850/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Karnak Cafe by : Naguib Mahfouz

Download or read book Karnak Cafe written by Naguib Mahfouz. This book was released on 2011-05-04. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this gripping and suspenseful novella from the Egyptian Nobel Prize-winner, three young friends survive interrogation by the secret police, only to find their lives poisoned by suspicion, fear, and betrayal. At a Cairo café in the 1960s, a legendary former belly dancer lovingly presides over a boisterous family of regulars, including a group of idealistic university students. One day, amid reports of a wave of arrests, three of the students disappear: the excitable Hilmi, his friend Ismail, and Ismail's beautiful girlfriend Zaynab. When they return months later, they are apparently unharmed and yet subtly and profoundly changed. It is only years later, after their lives have been further shattered, that the narrator pieces together the young people's horrific stories and learns how the government used them against one another. In a riveting final chapter, their torturer himself enters the Café and sits among his former victims, claiming a right to join their society of the disillusioned. Now translated into English for the first time, Naguib Mahfouz's tale of the insidious effects of government-sanctioned torture and the suspension of rights and freedoms in a time of crisis is shockingly contemporary.

The Egyptian Coffeehouse

2020-11-26 Social Science

Author : Dalia Mostafa
Release : 2020-11-26
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 299/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Egyptian Coffeehouse by : Dalia Mostafa

Download or read book The Egyptian Coffeehouse written by Dalia Mostafa. This book was released on 2020-11-26. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The coffeehouse is a microcosm of the larger Egyptian society with its history of multiculturalism and great diversity. It is not only a social space which was created and shaped by the people over decades in their streets, neighbourhoods and cities, but it also occupies a sphere in the popular imagination full of stories, memories and social networks. Despite the coffeehouse's cultural centrality and socio-political importance in Egypt, academic research and publications on its significance remain sparse. This volume aims to fill this gap by presenting, for the first time in English, a full study analysing the importance of the coffeehouse as an urban phenomenon, with its cultural, historical, economic and political significance in contemporary Egyptian society. The volume shows how historically the coffeehouse has always played a key role as a commercial enterprise; and culturally, as a place for rich literary and artistic production which has multi-layered representations in Egyptian novels, cinema and popular music, amongst other genres. Economically, the coffeehouse has been vital for accessing job opportunities, especially for informal workers; in addition to having played a crucial role in political mobilisation during decisive historical events, as well as in recent years during the 2011 revolution and its aftermath. Through extended interviews with six residents in Cairo, the authors further examine the role and influence of the coffeehouse as a significant feature of contemporary Egyptian life and urban landscape.

Committed to Disillusion

2016 History

Author : David Fred DiMeo
Release : 2016
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 619/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Committed to Disillusion by : David Fred DiMeo

Download or read book Committed to Disillusion written by David Fred DiMeo. This book was released on 2016. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arabic literature; Egypt; 20th century; history and criticism.

Committed to Disillusion

2016-08-12 Literary Criticism

Author : David DiMeo
Release : 2016-08-12
Genre : Literary Criticism
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 578/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Committed to Disillusion by : David DiMeo

Download or read book Committed to Disillusion written by David DiMeo. This book was released on 2016-08-12. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can a writer help to bring about a more just society? This question was at the heart of the movement of al-adab al-multazim, or committed literature, which claimed to dominate Arab writing in the mid-twentieth century. By the 1960s, however, leading Egyptian writers had retreated into disillusionment, producing agonized works that challenged the key assumptions of socially engaged writing. Rather than a rejection of the idea, however, these works offered reinterpretation of committed writing that helped set the stage for activist writers of the present. David DiMeo focuses on the work of three leading writers whose socially committed fiction was adapted to the disenchantment and discontent of the late twentieth century: Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, and Sonallah Ibrahim. Despite their disappointments with the direction of Egyptian society in the decades following the 1952 revolution, they kept the spirit of committed literature alive through a deeply introspective examination of the relationship between the writer, the public, and political power. Reaching back to the roots of this literary movement, DiMeo examines the development of committed literature from its European antecedents to its peak of influence in the 1950s, and contrasts the committed works with those of disillusionment that followed. Committed to Disillusion is vital reading for scholars and students of Arabic literature and the modern history and politics of the Middle East.

Conscience of the Nation

2008 Literary Criticism

Author : Richard Jacquemond
Release : 2008
Genre : Literary Criticism
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 018/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Conscience of the Nation by : Richard Jacquemond

Download or read book Conscience of the Nation written by Richard Jacquemond. This book was released on 2008. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artfully combining social and literary history, this unique study explores the dual loyalties of contemporary Egyptian authors from the 1952 Revolution to the present day. Egypt's writers have long had an elevated idea of their social mission, considering themselves 'the conscience of the nation.' At the same time, modern Egyptian writers work under the liberal conception of the writer borrowed from the European model. As a result, each Egyptian writer treads the tightrope between authority and freedom, social commitment and artistic license, loyalty to the state and to personal expression, in an ongoing quest for an elusive literary ideal. With these fundamentals in mind, Conscience of the Nation examines Egyptian literary production over the past fifty years, surveying works by established writers, as well as those of dozens of other authors who are celebrated in Egypt but whose writings are largely unknown to the foreign reader. Novelists and poets, scriptwriters and playwrights, critics and journalists all have battled with and tried to resolve the tensions inherent in the conflicting forces of self and society.

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