After Coffee

After Coffee follows the story of Medhat, an orphaned boy who grows up shuffling between various farming families in the beautiful province of Ismailia, north of Egypt.

What was intended to be a brief visit for the five-year-old to Cairo ended up being the beginning of a nomadic life no one could have imagined for him.

Mehat's journey takes him across the many landmarks of Egypt and beyond, all the way to Vienna where he discovers that his feelings of displacement still haunt him at the core. In a narrative that interweaves aspects of Egyptian folklore, epic prose and classical literature, Abdelrashid Mahmoudi skilfully presents the conflict between the man in his exile who reflects longingly on his history and origins, and the village boy who belonged nowhere.