The Diaries of Waguih Ghali

“Waguih Ghali’s widely acclaimed novel Beer in the Snooker Club has become a classic of Arabic literature. Written from an exilic perspective in 1960s Germany, it chronicles the demise of colonial-cosmopolitanism and the emergence of anti-colonial authoritarianism in postrevolutionary Egypt. Ghali, like other once marginalized authors and artists, has become an intellectual reference in and outside the Arab world for current attempts to re-articulate the terms of the debate on culture, nation, and the world in times of painful transition from an old order to something unknown. The publication of his diaries is an important contribution to this endeavor, for it 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.”—Georges Khalil, Forum Transregionale Studien

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

"Meticulously edited by May Hawass. . . . 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."—Paul K Lyons, The Diary Review

“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. His every romantic relationship (and there were many: he was attractive to women) is doomed by his terror of being humiliated and abandoned.”—Ursula Lindsey, London Review of Books