Beer in the Snooker Club (Twentieth Century Lives) [Paperback]

Waguih Ghali (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2, 1999 | Series: Twentieth Century Lives

This reissue of the late Waguih Ghali's only novel makes us mourn his loss all the more keenly. A plainspoken writer of consummate wryness, grace, and humor, the Egyptian author chronicles the lives of a polyglot Cairene upper crust, shortly after the fall of King Farouk, who are thoroughly unprepared to change their neo-feudal ways. "This is the best book to date about post-Farouk Egypt."—Sylvie Drake, Los Angeles Times

Editorial Reviews

Review

This is a wonderful book. Quiet, understated, seemingly without any artistic or formal pretensions. Yet quite devastating in its human and political insights....If you want to convey to someone what Egypt was like in the forties and fifties, and why it is impossible for Europeans or Americans to understand, give them this book. It makes The Alexandria Quartet look like the travel brochure it is. (Gabriel Josipovici )

...A triumph of genuinely comic social satire. (Times Literary Supplement )

Ghali's novel reproduces a cultural state of shock with great accuracy and great humor. (James Marcus The Nation )

Ghali wrote one novel, and it's a comic masterpiece. (The Observer )

About the Author

Waguih Ghali was raised in Cairo, but spent much of his adult life studying and working in Britain, France, Sweden, and Germany.

Product Details

• Paperback: 222 pages
• Publisher: New Amsterdam Books (November 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0941533816
• ISBN-13: 978-0941533812
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #93,266 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic read-world literature at its best, November 13, 2006

By 

J. Iskander (Atlanta, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beer in the Snooker Club Pb (Paperback)

Waguih Ghali, a member of the extended family of the former UN Secretary General, wrote this book in English, a language in which he was entirely at ease. In that, and in many other ways, this book is autobiographical. It traces the lives of several characters, but especially a couple of young men of the Egyptian upper class, at a time of great change in the 1950s. England is leaving Egypt, finally, in 1954. The Egyptian army has overthrown the royal family and instituted a republican system that both embodies the nationalistic and progressive hope of many Egyptians, and also becomes increasingly repressive. The characters, Ram and Font, are Egyptians who are Anglophone and upper class, and so are out of touch with the new order. How they deal with that order, with their identities, and their coming of age is the story of book.
At some level, this book is about Egypt, and it is a useful book in that sense. But it is also a wise, funny and beautiful read: a book that most readers will devour in one sitting and be left wanting more. This was Ghali's only book, but it is a real memorial to him.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best obscure novels I know, October 6, 2009

By 

R. M. Peterson (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beer in the Snooker Club (Twentieth Century Lives) (Paperback)

BEER IN THE SNOOKER CLUB depicts Egypt in the tumultuous 1950's through the eyes of Ram, who is one of the more distinctive and conflicted characters I have recently encountered in fiction. Ram is an educated, well-connected Copt, probably in his mid-twenties. His best friend is Font, another Copt. Ram and Font spent four years in England and are obsessed with English civilization and culture, but they also despise British colonialism and hypocrisy and they participated in guerilla fighting against the British during the Suez War. Ram's long-time girlfriend is Edna, who is from a Jewish family that has lived in Egypt for five generations. Ram empathizes with the fellaheen and is intellectually outraged on their behalf, but he also mingles with the vapid dandies who play croquet and bridge and his favorite pastime is beer in the snooker club. Political activism or a comfortable life? I leave that for the reader to find out.

BEER IN THE SNOOKER CLUB was published in 1964. It was the first novel by Waguih Ghali, and when he committed suicide in 1968, it became his only novel. It surely is one of the finest "single-work" novels there is.

It is difficult to tidily characterize BEER IN THE SNOOKER CLUB. It is as ambiguous as the life it so clearly depicts. While scathing in its denunciation of the British in Egypt, it is equally condemnatory of Nasser, his betrayal of socialism, and his concentration camps and atrocities of political oppression. Egypt has not yet become Islamicized, but for Ram and Font (two Copts) and for Edna the handwriting on the wall is pretty clear. Several of the political sentiments of Ram (or Ghali, as I suspect they are the same) are interesting in retrospect. For one thing, the novel has no truck whatsoever with pan-Arabism. And it also voices a "let-live" attitude towards Israel: "Imagine a third of our income being pumped into an army to fight a miserable two million Jews who were massacred something terrible in the last war." The Egypt of BEER IN THE SNOOKER CLUB is at a stage of political, economic, and religious uncertainty or indecision. One of the central issues of the novel is, "What is an Egyptian?" And the same uncertainty or indecision extends to Ram's personal life: what to do with himself, whether or not to live attached to the purse strings of his rich aunt, whether or not to marry, and who?

There are a few missteps, but by and large the narrative technique and writing are accomplished. The novel is alternately comic and bitter, satirical and angry. Ghali is quite worldly and knowledgeable about all sorts of Western historical, political, and cultural matters, which are liberally sprinkled throughout the novel. He also is empathetic and politically astute. Consider this excerpt, which is representative of the depths this superficially light and breezy novel at times plumbs:

"If someone has read an enormous amount of literature, and has a thorough knowledge of contemporary history, from the beginning of this century to the present day, and he has an imagination, and he is intelligent, and he is just, and he is kind, and he cares about other people of all races, and he has enough time to think, and he is honest and sincere, there are two things can happen to him; he can join the Communist Party and then leave it, wallowing in its short-comings, or he can become mad. Or * * * if he is unconsciously insincere, he may join one of the many left-wing societies in Europe, and enjoy himself."

Like Ram, Ghali probably was culturally conflicted . . . and isolated. And likely one of the factors contributing to his suicide was that other Egyptians did not regard him as one of them. Whatever, BEER IN THE SNOOKER CLUB is a very worthy legacy. Its scandalous obscurity probably is due mostly to the fact that it resolutely steers clear of any of the vogue ideologies of the late-20th-Century. A novel written in English by a Copt that does not espouse pan-Arabism simply won't be promoted as one of the finest modern works produced by an Arab, although BEER IN THE SNOOKER CLUB surely is that. Waguih Ghali and the novel deserve a wide audience, and my applause and gratitude to New Amsterdam Books for keeping it in print.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you like Camus..., January 28, 2006

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returnitem - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beer in the Snooker Club (Twentieth Century Lives) (Paperback)

Ram is a 20-something Coptic Egyptian without much direction, yet an opinion on just about everything. Ghali writes very much in the style of Albert Camus (i.e. existentialism; meandering plot) and at times is quite humorous ("It's better to have loved and had a venereal, then never to have loved at all.") The story has a little of everything: politics, love, drama. However, you have to know a little about 20th century Egyptian history/politics to get some of the references (Nasser, Aswan Dam, etc.) It's pretty easy to get through other than that.