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Loading... Karnak Café (1974)by Naguib Mahfouz
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This novel begins with a man casually dropping into a cafe and becoming the observer of a love obsession of a former belly dancer, now owner of the cafe, with Hilmi Hamada, a young medical student who frequents the cafe with his friends except for the times he and his group of young friends repeatedly and suddenly stop appearing. The question is what is happening to these students during their absences from the cafe? It it something political? Is it imprisonment? They say it’s a trip, but the students appear changed when they reappear after these abrupt absences. Having previously lived in Israel, I found it interesting to learn about the Egyptian politics of that time, although I was too young at the time of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 for me to have known anything about it. I read about it now to give more context to this novel. It seems as if, in every political situation, it’s always the college students that get it the roughest. Plainly put, they know too much. Hence they have too much power in the eyes of the governmental elite. This is such a universal fact. It was hard to read how this scenario played out in this novel. I liked the way this story was told. It was like viewing a scene through different windows as each character described his or her experiences in dealing with friendship, political alliances and betrayal. The political discussions at the end of the book were really timeless as well as the statement by the one-time secret police interrogator. Once in a while I read a book that sparks my interest in the history and culture of the writer's country... well, more often than not that is the case. And it is definitely the case with Naguib Mahfouz's books. Written soon after the the June War of 1967, this book explores the post-1967 era of Egypt's history, an era of profound dismay, of reflection, of recrimination, of "looking back in anger". It is a short novel that takes place in a small Café. The Café is frequented by 3 young people and several older people. The young people periodically disappear and reappear. And their story of imprisonment, brutal interrogations, and betrayals is pieced together by the narrator. This is a book that is still relevant today. no reviews | add a review
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At a Cairo café, a cross-section of Egyptian society, young and old, rich and poor, are drawn together by the quality of its coffee and the allure of its owner, legendary former dancer Qurunfula. When three of the young patrons disappear for prolonged periods, the older customers display varying reactions to the news. On their return, they recount horrific stories of arrest and torture at the hands of the secret police, and the habitués of the café begin to withdraw from each other in fear, suspecting that there is an informer among them. With the nighttime arrests and the devastation of the country's defeat in the 1967 War, the café is transformed from a haven of camaraderie and bright-eyed idealism to an atmosphere charged with mounting suspicion, betrayal, and crushing disillusionment.Exposing the dark underbelly of ideology, and delving into the idea of the 'necessary evils' of social upheaval, Karnak Café remains one of the Nobel laureate's most pointedly critical works, as relevant and incisive today as it was when it was first published in 1974. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)892.736Literature Literature of other languages Middle Eastern languages Arabic (Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan) Arabic fiction 1945–2000LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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There is a claustrophobic sense to the story, because once the narrator enters the cafe it is almost as if that is the only place the older characters exist and the younger ones have witness to what happened to them outside. ( )