Beer in the Snooker Club (Twentieth Century Lives)

This reissue of the late Waguih Ghali's only novel makes us mourn his loss all the more keenly. A plainspoken writer of consummate wryness, grace, and humor, the Egyptian author chronicles the lives of a polyglot Cairene upper crust, shortly after the fall of King Farouk, who are thoroughly unprepared to change their neo-feudal ways. "This is the best book to date about post-Farouk Egypt."—Sylvie Drake, Los Angeles Times