Overview

In 1968 Egyptian novelist and political exile Waguih Ghali committed suicide in the London flat of his editor, friend, and sometime lover, Diana Athill. Ghali left behind six notebooks of diaries that for decades were largely inaccessible to the public. An Egyptian in the Swinging Sixties is the first publication of its kind of the journals, casting fascinating light on a likeable and highly enigmatic literary personality.Waguih Ghali (1930?-69), author of the acclaimed novel Beer in the Snooker Club, was a libertine, sponger, and manic depressive, but also an extraordinary writer, a pacifist, and a savvy political commentator. Covering the last four years of his life, Ghali's Diaries offer an exciting glimpse into London's swinging sixties.Moving from West Germany to London and Israel, and back in memory to Egypt and Paris, the entries boast of endless drinking, countless love affairs, and of mingling with the dazzling intellectuals of London, but the Diaries also critique the sinister political circles of Jerusalem and Cairo, describe Ghali's trepidation at being the first Egyptian allowed into Israel after the 1967 War, and confess in detail the pain and difficulties of writing and exile. Including two interviews conducted by Deborah Starr, with celebrated literary editor Diana Athill, OBE, and with Ghali's cousin, former director of UNICEF-Geneva, Samir Basta, the Diaries bring together those most familiar with Ghali's life and work, and offer a fresh take on a distinctive author and a vibrant decade.

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9789774167805

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Reviews

Certainly a must-read for anyone interested in Ghali's work and perhaps of wider interest. --<strong>Marcia Lynx Qualey, </strong> <strong><em>Arabic Literature (in English)</em> </strong><strong> </strong>

Certainly a must-read for anyone interested in Ghali's work and perhaps of wider interest. --Marcia Lynx Qualey, Arabic Literature (in English)

"""Moving, lyrical, and never less than bracingly honest. . . . To venture inside the mind of Waguih Ghali is to feel his pain but also his joy; to indulge in the giddy pleasures of a life lived to its fullest, in spite of its brevity. This is the gift that Hawas and AUC Press offer to us here: to discover for ourselves the inner workings of a sympathetic, talented, and eminently complex man.""—Banipal ""An account of a daily struggle to avoid 'sinking', to fight the 'cafard', not to succumb to 'the disease'—all the different names Ghali finds for his depression.""—London Review of Books ""Certainly a must-read for anyone interested in Ghali's work""—Arab Lit ""Reading Ghali's writings is a highly effective antidote to the dominant cultural polarization of our debates over the Arab world that all too often assert a supposedly monolithic Islamic culture and in which the tensions of the region are reduced to a binary between Islamists and authoritarian rulers. Ghali's work cheerfully turns the tables, lays open intermediate layers, and shatters stereotypes. It is high time to discover--or rediscover--this writer.""—Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ""The diaries give us a clearer picture of Ghali and the nature of his life in exile, and help to correct some misconceptions about him. They constitute an important document of confession in which we can trace and reflect on the difficulties of writing and the alienation of a writer who lost his home in his childhood and his country in his youth.""—al-Hayat ""Meticulously edited . . . . The diaries cover, and shed much light on, the last four years of Ghali's life as well as, through reminiscences, aspects of his youth.""—The Diary Review ""It would take a stone-hearted reader to laugh at the author's suffering.""—Qantara.de ""The diary is compulsive. . . . Against all the odds he is likeable, almost a little admirable, and brave in his contorted way.""—Mercurius Maghrebensis  ""Astonishingly frank""—The Tanjara ""The publication of his diaries . . . enables us to learn more about the author and his context. Ghali was a non-conformist socialist, a political dissenter, an avant-garde figure, haunted by alienation, depression, nostalgia, and by being a little too fond of the good life, and by contradictions that still mark our times.""—Forum Transregionale Studien"

Author Information

May Hawas received her PhD in literature from Leuven University in 2014. In addition to her editorial experience she has worked in various NGOs concerned with women's issues and youth employment. Some of her short stories have been published in Mizna Journal, Yellow Medicine, and African Writing. She currently teaches English literature at the University of Alexandria.

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