Karnak Café (novel)
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Karnak Café (novel)
''Karnak Café'' (''Al-Karnak'', Arabic: الكرنك) is a novella written in 1974 by Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988. The novel was made into a film of the same name in 1975. Set against the discussions between the patrons of a café in Cairo, the ''Karnak Café'', the book follows the stories of three individuals during the 1960s, including the Six-Day War (1967) and the War of Attrition (1967–70). It therein explores some of the political currents vying for control over Egyptian politics in the 1960s as well as political persecution, the deep state, and state violence. Plot summary The narrator begins the story by describing how he originally discovered the ''Karnak Café'' in Cairo, attracted by the quiet charms of Qurunfula, a bellydancer of former fame and the café's owner. There, the narrator quickly becomes part of the café's regular crowd of patrons, which represent a cross-section of Egyptian society during the earl ...
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Roger Allen (translator)
Roger Allen is an English scholar of Arabic literature. He was the first student at Oxford University to obtain a PhD degree in modern Arabic literature, which he did under the supervision of Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. His doctoral thesis was on Muhammad al-Muwaylihi’s narrative ''Hadith Isa ibn Hisham'' (''Isa Ibn Hisham’s Tale''), and was later published as a book titled ''A Period of Time'' (1974, 1992). At the request of Dr Gaber Asfour, the Director-General of the Supreme Council for Culture in Egypt, he later prepared an edition of the complete works of Muhammad al-Muwaylihi (2002), and that of his father, Ibrahim al-Muwaylihi (2007). In 1968, Allen moved from Bristol to Philadelphia to take up an academic position at the University of Pennsylvania, where he subsequently taught generations of students and Arabic scholars. He co-wrote an Arabic textbook with Adel Allouche, and was engaged with Arabic pedagogy throughout his career. After a 43-year career at UPenn, he retir ...
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Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metropolitan area, with a population of 21.9 million, is the 12th-largest in the world by population. Cairo is associated with ancient Egypt, as the Giza pyramid complex and the ancient cities of Memphis and Heliopolis are located in its geographical area. Located near the Nile Delta, the city first developed as Fustat, a settlement founded after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 640 next to an existing ancient Roman fortress, Babylon. Under the Fatimid dynasty a new city, ''al-Qāhirah'', was founded nearby in 969. It later superseded Fustat as the main urban centre during the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods (12th–16th centuries). Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life, and is titled "the city of a thousand m ...
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Novels By Naguib Mahfouz
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ...
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Novels Set In Egypt
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ...
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Arabic-language Novels
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston, 2011. Having emerged in the 1st century, it is named after the Arab people; the term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula, as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece. Since the 7th century, Arabic has been characterized by diglossia, with an opposition between a standard prestige language—i.e., Literary Arabic: Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Classical Arabic—and diverse vernacular varieties, which serve as mother tongues. Colloquial dialects vary significantly from MSA, impeding mutual intelligibility. MSA is only acquired through formal education and is not spoken natively. It is the language of literature, official documents, and formal written medi ...
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1974 Novels
Major events in 1974 include the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and the resignation of United States President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. In the Middle East, the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War determined politics; following Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's resignation in response to high Israeli casualties, she was succeeded by Yitzhak Rabin. In Europe, the invasion and occupation of northern Cyprus by Turkish troops initiated the Cyprus dispute, the Carnation Revolution took place in Portugal, and Chancellor of West Germany Willy Brandt resigned following an espionage scandal surrounding his secretary Günter Guillaume. In sports, the year was primarily dominated by the FIFA World Cup in West Germany, in which the German national team won the championship title, as well as The Rumble in the Jungle, a boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire. Events January–February * January 26 – Bülent Ecevit of CHP forms the new ...
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Communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange which allocates products to everyone in the society.: "One widespread distinction was that socialism socialised production only while communism socialised production and consumption." Communist society also involves the absence of private property, social classes, money, and the state. Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance, but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more vanguardist or communist party-driven approach through the development of a constitutional socialist state ...
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War Of Attrition
The War of Attrition ( ar, حرب الاستنزاف, Ḥarb al-Istinzāf; he, מלחמת ההתשה, Milhemet haHatashah) involved fighting between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and their allies from 1967 to 1970. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, no serious diplomatic efforts tried to resolve the issues at the heart of the Arab–Israeli conflict. The 1967 Arab League summit formulated in September the " three no's" policy: barring peace, recognition or negotiations with Israel. The Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser believed that only military initiative would compel Israel or the international community to facilitate a full Israeli withdrawal from Sinai, and hostilities soon resumed along the Suez Canal. These initially took the form of limited artillery duels and small-scale incursions into Sinai, but by 1969, the Egyptian Army judged itself prepared for larger-scale operations. On March 8, 1969, Nasser proclaimed the official ...
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Six-Day War
The Six-Day War (, ; ar, النكسة, , or ) or June War, also known as the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states (primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan) from 5 to 10 June 1967. Escalated hostilities broke out amid poor relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours following the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which were signed at the end of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, First Arab–Israeli War. Earlier, in 1956, regional tensions over the Straits of Tiran escalated in what became known as the Suez Crisis, when Israel invaded Egypt over the Israeli passage through the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran, Egyptian closure of maritime passageways to Israeli shipping, ultimately resulting in the re-opening of the Straits of Tiran to Israel as well as the deployment of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) along the Borders of Israel#Border with Egypt, Egypt–Israel border. In ...
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Karnak (film)
Karnak (translit: Al-Karnak, Egyptian Arabic: الكرنك) is a 1975 Egyptian political film based on a novel written by Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz with the same name, and directed by Ali Badrakhan and starring Soad Hosny. It features Salah Zulfikar in a special appearance as Shoukry the rebellious member of parliament. The film includes an ensemble cast that includes Kamal El-Shennawi, Nour El-Sherif, Farid Shawqi, Taheyya Kariokka, Emad Hamdy and Shwikar. ''Karnak'' is listed in the Top 100 films in Egyptian cinema of the 20th century''.'' The film is set against the discussions between the patrons of a café in Cairo, the ''Karnak Café.'' It follows the stories of three individuals during the 1960s, including the Six-Day War (1967), War of Attrition (1967–70) and ends with victory in October War (1973). Plot The film tells about the state of media blackout pursued by the Egyptian regime during the 1960s. In the prison, they are forced to confess to crimes they did no ...
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Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha ( arz, نجيب محفوظ عبد العزيز ابراهيم احمد الباشا, ; 11 December 1911 – 30 August 2006) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. Mahfouz is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers in the Arabic literature, along with Taha Hussein, to explore themes of existentialism. He is the only Egyptian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He published 35 novels, over 350 short stories, 26 screenplays, hundreds of op-ed columns for Egyptian newspapers, and seven plays over a 70-year career, from the 1930s until 2004. All of his novels take place in Egypt, and always mentions the lane, which equals the world. His most famous works include '' The Cairo Trilogy'' and ''Children of Gebelawi''. Many of Mahfouz's works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films; no Arab writer exceeds Mahfouz in number of works that have been adapted for cinema and television. While Mahf ...
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