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 1969, 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.
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Rosieboo
Give it a miss and go play snooker
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 3, 2018Mina W. Wardakhan
Good print, can be cheaper.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 19, 2018Amazon Customer
First pages missing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 14, 2016
