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"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."—Banipal
From the author of the cult classic, Beer in the Snooker Club, these captivating diaries by an Egyptian exile, novelist, and intellectual reveal the extraordinary man in his time
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. The Diaries of Waguih Ghali: An Egyptian in the Swinging Sixties, in two volumes, is the first publication of its kind of the journals, casting fascinating light on a likable 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. Volume 1 tells of Ghali’s life in Rheydt, West Germany, providing unique insights from the perspective of an Egyptian immigrant on postwar Germany and shedding light on Ghali’s own writing and personality when he was at the peak of his depression. This volume also includes his reminiscences of his childhood in Alexandria and Cairo, drawing in bittersweet nostalgia a picture of a bygone era in Egypt, while in the background loom what would become milestone events in his adopted countries in subsequent decades: the Treblinka trials and the gains of the National Democratic Party in Germany and the rise of the Labour Party in Britain.
Including an interview conducted by Deborah Starr with celebrated literary editor Diana Athill, 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.
"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
Waguih Ghali was born in Cairo in about 1930. He attended high school in Alexandria and then studied abroad in Europe. Fearing political persecution, he fled Egypt in 1958, living the rest of his life in exile, in London and Europe, where he wrote and worked as a journalist. In 1968, following a battle with depression, Ghali took his own life in London, at the home of his friend and editor, Diana Athill. Beer in the Snooker Club, now a cult classic and his only finished novel, was first published by André Deutsch in 1964.
May Hawas is Lecturer in World and Global Literatures at Cambridge University, and Valerie Eliot Fellow in English at Newnham College. She is the author of Politicising World Literature: Egypt, Between Pedagogy and the Public (2019) and editor of The Routledge Companion to World Literature and World History (2018). She is also a founding member of The Journal of World Literature.