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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2022

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  • Azazeel by Youssef Ziedan. It’s a tale set in 5th-century Egypt and the Levant, following a coptic monk’s journey amidst the theological controversies of the early Christian curch. Apart from the protagonist (and his devilish visitor) I think all the characters are historically real as well as for the events. It’s a very interesting period during which Christians, Jews and Atheists coexisted, although perturbently.





  • Thank you for your input! I read your review and I appreciate the fact that you mentioned History, that “great disorderly Tangle of Lines.” I refrained from tackling it mainly because of a quote that I am still struggling to wrap my head around:

    As Savages commemorate their great Hunts with Dancing, so History is the Dance of our Hunt for Christ, and how we have far’d. If it is undeniably so that he rose from the Dead, then the Event is taken into History, and History is redeem’d from the service of Darkness,— with all the secular Consequences, flowing from that one Event, design’d and will’d to occur. (Ch. 7, p. 75)













    • Musical theme: Kahlil Gibran wrote an eloquent essay on music, though good luck finding it.

    • Outside your comfort zone: Capitalism as Civilisation by Ntina Tzouvala, a theoretical work which examines how western legal scholars categorized non-western polities based on a racist standard of civilisation and justified colonising them.

    • Book from a different cultural background: the Cairo Trilogy by the Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, a chronicle of a wealthy family witnessing the instability of the 1930s in British-occupied Egypt.









  • It’s always been a family (indeed, a national) tradition to watch the world cup. Son inherits his loyalty to a club from father just like clan names. However, in the last two cups I became only loyal to a good match of football, to whomever knows how to treat a ball like a gentleman. Perhaps it’s the nostalgia or the collective bondage which still draws me like millions of other fans to watch it play out every four years.

    That said, nothing beats a good, friendly match with the pals in the local field; or the recess matches between the cramped walls in school, using a home-made nylon/paper ball.