A CASE OF SELF RESPECT (English Edition) [Kindle-editie] beoordelingen het boek quotes

Farid is a young university graduate with no future. He is a researcher at the National Research Institute of Egypt and he does no research for the less than meager pay he receives. He is a young Copt, tall, good looking, intelligent, serious and morose, whose school buddy, Antoun Alekian, an Armenian, is the exact opposite: short, plump, funny looking and loud, a hopeless student all through his school years but brilliant in business and in the seduction of women. Antoun's parents are divorced and his mother has a dressmaking atelier and employs about a dozen girls. Mona (Antoun's mother) makes a pass at Farid in one of his visits with her son, which he disregards until Antoun by a sleight of hand arranges a rendez-vous. Farid becomes Mona's lover for a while until she returns to her former longtime boyfriend, who in desperation agrees to marry her. Farid, meanwhile has fallen for Djamila, a girl clad in mourning who works with Mona, and he chases her assiduously. She is initially unresponsive to his approaches but softens as time goes by. Her communist husband was executed by the regime as a spy and it seems as if she can not overcome this fact. She goes out with Farid to the movies and on short excursions to the Pyramids and other outdoor spots in Cairo but refuses to sleep with him. Confidence between them, however, has been building up and they attend Mona's wedding together where they dance and kiss passionately. That night Djamila asks him to come to her house and they finally make love. Later, during their conversation she proposes to tell him the story of her friend Rania. But did Rania exist and was that her story?