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.
Karnak Cafe
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“A fierce yet subtle novel. . . . Every page smolders.” —The New York Sun“A storyteller of the first order in any idiom.” —Vanity Fair
About the Author
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ was born in 1911 in Cairo and began writing at the age of seventeen. His first novel was published in 1939. Since then he has written nearly forty novel-length works and hundreds of short stories. In 1988 Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in 2006.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gripping, suspenseful novella about Egyptian mindset in 1960s,
By
This review is from: Karnak Café (Paperback)
Karnak Cafe by Naquib Mahfouz is a hundred page socio-political thriller. Mahfouz's characters gather together in Karnak Cafe, run by a former belly dancer. The regular customers include old men like the narrator, who remember Egypt before 1952 revolution and remember the belly dancer in her prime. The regular customers also include three university students, who are rooted in the present, without a bittersweet nostalgia for past that old people carry within them. Together the cast converses about religion, love, politics and forms the family of Karnak Cafe.
Then one day the students disappear, and when they return, their selves are transformed irreversibly. While the government throws them into prison again and again, their outside world is transformed by the 1967 war. Many years later, the narrator reconstructs the background stories of the three students, who loose their idealism, innocence and zest for life in face of harsh tortures inflicted on them. In a chilling climax, the torturer of these students joins the community of Karnak Cafe, and presents his own disillusionment with the system. The complexity of times is captured brilliantly in the narrative that follows the personal stories of the protagonists. By presenting social, political and economic tragedies through prism of personalities, Mahfouz creates a compelling and unforgettable novella. The nightmarish Karnak Cafe is a must read, contemporary novel which for me ranks along with Blindness by Saramago and Toni Morrison novels.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"What was the point of [progress] if people were so feeble that they were not worth a fly, if they had no personal rights.",
By
This review is from: Karnak Cafe (Hardcover)
(4.5 stars) In this powerful novella by Naguib Mafouz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, a narrator stops in at the Karnak Café, an off-the-beaten-path café in Cairo run by Qurunfula, a former belly dancer, who raised her craft to the level of true art. Recognizing her immediately, he stays, seduced by the atmosphere and by the charm of a small group of regulars--three old men, three young people, and the PR director of a company--who visit the café every day and create their own urban "family."
Written in 1974 and newly translated by Roger Allen, the story takes place in the mid-1960s and focuses on the café regulars as they respond to key moments in contemporary Egyptian history. For the young people, "history began with the 1952 Revolution," in which the army, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, overthrew King Farouk, abolished the pro-British monarchy, and established a republic. The three young people and their fates become the focus of the narrator when the young people inexplicably disappear for several months, They return, changed, only to disappear again. While they are gone, Egypt is defeated in the Six Day War of 1967 with Israel. Mahfouz develops tremendous suspense about the outcomes of the regulars of the Karnak Café, at the same time that he creates an intense look at the pressures placed upon them as they try to do what they think is right. The "family" atmosphere, which is so dominant at the beginning of the story, slowly dissipates as speculation develops about the fates of the young people. Changing points of view keep the perspective on events constantly changing and the interest in the outcome high. The taboos of the society become obvious, and the young people's faith in the future of the revolution of 1952 is put to the test. Ultimately, they must consider whether "peace is more risky than war." Their individual lives cease to exist in the aftermath of their trauma, and their ability to trust is gone forever. Mafouz recreates in a mere one hundred pages an historical record of a country yearning to be free, at the same time that he depicts the movements against individual freedom which are also evolving. The young people he creates here are ordinary college students, though all of them have overcome far more than the average western college student will ever dream of. Though they insist that they still believe in the future of the revolution of 1952, their experience less than fifteen years later, shows them and the reader just how far they have left to go. Dynamic, powerful, and thought-provoking, this novella carries an impact--and modern relevance--that the reader will not soon forget. n Mary Whipple Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth A Novel The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street (Everyman's Library) Children of the Alley: A Novel Arabian Nights and Days: A Novel Miramar
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"What was the point of [progress] if people were so feeble that they were not worth a fly, if they had no personal rights.",
By
This review is from: Karnak Café (Paperback)
(4.5 stars) In this powerful novella by Naguib Mafouz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, a narrator stops in at the Karnak Café, an off-the-beaten-path café in Cairo run by Qurunfula, a former belly dancer, who raised her craft to the level of true art. Recognizing her immediately, he stays, seduced by the atmosphere and by the charm of a small group of regulars--three old men, three young people, and the PR director of a company--who visit the café every day and create their own urban "family."
Written in 1974 and newly translated by Roger Allen, the story takes place in the mid-1960s and focuses on the café regulars as they respond to key moments in contemporary Egyptian history. For the young people, "history began with the 1952 Revolution," in which the army, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, overthrew King Farouk, abolished the pro-British monarchy, and established a republic. The three young people and their fates become the focus of the narrator when the young people inexplicably disappear for several months, They return, changed, only to disappear again. While they are gone, Egypt is defeated in the Six Day War of 1967 with Israel. Mahfouz develops tremendous suspense about the outcomes of the regulars of the Karnak Café, at the same time that he creates an intense look at the pressures placed upon them as they try to do what they think is right. The "family" atmosphere, which is so dominant at the beginning of the story, slowly dissipates as speculation develops about the fates of the young people. Changing points of view keep the perspective on events constantly changing and the interest in the outcome high. The taboos of the society become obvious, and the young people's faith in the future of the revolution of 1952 is put to the test. Ultimately, they must consider whether "peace is more risky than war." Their individual lives cease to exist in the aftermath of their trauma, and their ability to trust is gone forever. Mafouz recreates in a mere one hundred pages an historical record of a country yearning to be free, at the same time that he depicts the movements against individual freedom which are also evolving. The young people he creates here are ordinary college students, though all of them have overcome far more than the average western college student will ever dream of. Though they insist that they still believe in the future of the revolution of 1952, their experience less than fifteen years later, shows them and the reader just how far they have left to go. Dynamic, powerful, and thought-provoking, this novella carries an impact--and modern relevance--that the reader will not soon forget. n Mary Whipple Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth A Novel The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street (Everyman's Library) Children of the Alley: A Novel Cairo Modern Arabian Nights and Days: A Novel Miramar
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Khalid Safwan, Hilmi Hamada, June War, Taha al Gharib, Munir Ahmad, Muslim Brotherhood Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Surprise Me!
Khalid Safwan, Hilmi Hamada, June War, Taha al Gharib, Munir Ahmad, Muslim Brotherhood Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Surprise Me!
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