Waguih Ghali 
Beer in the Snooker Club 

Behind the bar at Jameel’s in Cairo hang two mugs engraved with the names of Ram and Font. During their years together in London, they drank many a pint of Bass from these mugs. But there is no Bass in Nasser’s Egypt, so Ram and Font have to make do with a heady mixture of beer, vodka and whisky. Yearning for Bass they long to be far from a revolution that neither serves the people nor allows their rich aunts to live the life of leisure they are accustomed to. Stranded between two cultures, Ram and Font must choose between dangerous political opposition and reluctant acquiescence. First published in 1964,
Beer in the Snooker Club is a classic of the literature of emigration.

A propos de l’auteur

Born and brought up in Cairo, Waguih Ghali spent much of his adult life in Europe. His stay in London and his suicide in 1969 were described by his friend Diana Athill in After a Funeral (Cape, 1986). Beer in the Snooker Club is his only novel.