Al Karnak, by Naguib Mahfouz

Nothing brings people closer than shared suffering. In your hands is one of the most famous Arabic novels about the crushing of human dignity behind bars, Humay and Ismail and Zainab are children of the 1952 revolution and among its strongest supporters, but their fate was sad and thought-provoking. And "Al Karnak" is a popular café, owned by a retired dancer in her forties named "Qarnufla," and through four short chapters, we hear multiple voices and different stories of one event; to learn a lot about it. It seems to me that we have become a nation of deviants, the costs of life, defeat, and anxiety shatter values. The novel was first published in 1974 after the end of the era of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser, during which Naguib Mahfouz discussed the era of the July 23 revolution and the subsequent political arrests, torture, and the impact of these practices on the July generation. We are all criminals and all victims, and whoever does not understand that will understand nothing at all. Cinema drew inspiration from the novel Al Karnak to produce a film of the same name, directed by Ali Badrakhan in 1975, starring Soad Hosni and Nour El Sherif. Number of pages: 94