May Hawas is Lecturer in World and Global Literatures at Cambridge University, and Valerie Eliot Fellow in English at Newnham College. She is the author of Politicising World Literature: Egypt, Between Pedagogy and the Public (2019) and editor of The Routledge Companion to World Literature and World History (2018). She is also a founding member of The Journal of World Literature.

Interview with Samir Basta, by Deborah StarrThe Diaries of Waguih Ghali1. I Just Stayed at Home Yesterday. Sober.2. Been Here for Six Days Now3. Tragedies-Catastrophes4. Those Last Three or Four Weeks Have Been Utterly MadNotesIndex

In 1968 Egyptian novelist and political exile Waguih Ghali committed suicide in the London flat of his editor, friend, and sometime lover, Diana Athill. Ghali left behind six notebooks of diaries that for decades were largely inaccessible to the public. The Diaries of Waguih Ghali: An Egyptian in the Swinging Sixties, in two volumes, is the first publication of its kind of the journals, casting fascinating light on a likable and highly enigmatic literary personality.Waguih Ghali (1930?-69), author of the acclaimed novel Beer in the Snooker Club, was a libertine, sponger, and manic depressive, but also an extraordinary writer, a pacifist, and a savvy political commentator. Covering the last four years of his life, Ghali's Diaries offer an exciting glimpse into London's swinging sixties. Volume 2 covers the period from 1966 to 1968. Moving from West Germany to London and Israel, and back in memory to Egypt and Paris, the entries boast of endless drinking, countless love affairs, and of mingling with the dazzling intellectuals of London, but the Diaries also critique the sinister political circles of Jerusalem and Cairo, describe Ghali's trepidation at being the first Egyptian allowed into Israel after the 1967 War, and confess in detail the pain and difficulties of writing and exile.Including an interview conducted by Deborah Starr with Ghali's cousin, former director of UNICEF-Geneva, Samir Basta.