2009 books
49) Naguib Mahfouz, Karnak Café, 1974
This was written in 1971 but didn't appear until three years later, when the political and social climate was less sensitive following Egypt's humiliation by Israel in the June War of 1967 (something that's still today known as 'the setback'). In 1965 the friendly regulars at a Cairo café are a close-knit group, then some disappear amid reports of a wave of arrests only to return months later, apparently unharmed but subtly and profoundly changed. Years later after their lives have been further shattered the unnamed narrator tries to piece together what happened to them, learning how the government used torture to extract false confessions amid fears of both Communist infiltration and the Muslim Brotherhood: the long-term failure of the 1952 revolution saw many turning to extreme political solutions or, when those alleys also turned blind, the fedayeen or religious fundamentalism, all equally feared by a weak and paranoid government. This is one of Mahfouz's angriest books, he's both subtle and straightforward in his accusations and shows how a long-ago revolution can turn bad and wreck lives more than a decade later. He reserves an excellent surprise for the last chapter which is rather spoiled by the cover blurb; it was turned into a film sometime in the 1970s that was criticised for its manipulation of the truth about the June War, although I imagine this would also make a great play, one still worth seeing now.