Self-estrangement and identity fragmentation: a critical reading of the book (Coffee with Uranium) by Ahmad Khaled Tawfiq

Abstract

The self lives in the shadow of extensive ideological and global discourses, a crisis, and cultural and intellectual alienation. This crisis is magnified whenever the gap widens between what the Self believes in terms of ideas, customs, and values and what it does not believe in and rejects. In every society, there are fixed beliefs and value habits; exceeding them constitutes a flagrant violation of the culture of that society; bypassing them, dissolving them, and then replacing them with new ones robs the self of its culture, social, and religious identity and throws it into alienation and isolation.This study sheds light on the representations of alienation and fragmentation of identity in the book Coffee with Uranium) by Dr. Ahmed Khaled Tawfik. In the book, literary essays observe in a satirical style the most important Customs and traditions that deepened the crisis of self and its alienation in Egyptian society and at the same time restructured identity and stereotyped it with a pattern that does not correspond to the Customs and values of society, which resulted in its voices criticizing and criticizing the globalized reality, so to speak The study also reveals the details that the writer employed artistically about the phenomenon of alienation, whether in the title or the text..