“A tea party at the end of the world”
ليالٍ طوال انغمست فيها بين دفتي الرواية، تأخذني بأحداثها أيما تشاء، وأنا معها أبحر مبهورة ومشدوهة مع الأحداث وروعة رسم المشاهد، ثم تأتي الحبكة حينما يتمكن اليأس من النفوس وتتهاوى أبراج القوى هنا وهناك، ليتجلى حلّ العقدة ببراعة من كاتب متمكن من خيوط أحداثه وإتقانه لترتيب أدواته، فيمتعنا بنهاية رغم إرضائها لنا إلا أنها تؤجج الثورة بداخلنا لتدفعنا دفعًا نحو إعلاء هويتنا الأسمى.. نحو “الحياة”.
For long nights, I spent my hours immersed between the pages of the novel, surrendering completely to wherever its events desired to take me. I drifted through its world spellbound, astonished by the richness of its scenes and the sheer brilliance with which every scene was painted. Then comes the turning point, the masterstroke of the plot, when despair tightens its grip on every soul, and the towers of power begin collapsing one after another. Then the knot started to unravel with breathtaking mastery from a writer who in commands of every thread of his narrative with precision and control. He grants us an ending that, though deeply satisfying, ignites something rebellious within us, urging us relentlessly towards the affirmation of our highest identity… towards life itself.
An orange-coloured sun, cubic in form explodes across the sky. Purple cosmic dust descends upon the earth, scorching the skin of the living. Governments collapse. Prayers rise towards a deaf heaven. In the paralysed streets of Milan, ghosts from the past return to claim what they are once owned.
Ahmed Al-Qermezy, the epic’s tormented hero, wanders through this apocalypse consumed by certainty. Somewhere within this dying city, hides his torturer, Colonel Ghazi Fallah, who is unaware that his former victim has been tracking him for months.
Ahmed fled Bahrain seeking a new life after exile. He was attempting to rebuild his shattered life after years of imprisonment and torture, but how can anyone truly live while breathing the same air as their executioner?
Inside a refugee building, destinies intertwine like a terrible prophecy.
Lilaf Saeed, a Kurdish refugee traumatised by the Turkish invasion of Afrin, recognises in the streets the officer who once tortured her.
Mario Vitali, a racist Italian who transformed into an unpredicted companion. Beneath his roughness, he conceals the scars of a life shaped by violence.
Sofia, his enigmatic Polish partner known as ‘the Acid Lady’, prepares revenge with chilling precision from the shadows.
As the world watches the sky burns orange, everyone also senses that something vast and irreversible is unfolding. While the cosmic dust unleashes fatal skin eruptions across the globe, a woman appears seemingly from nowhere:
Maya Saud, the mysterious CEO of a global empire. She appears to have known about the catastrophe long before it began. She has read Ahmed’s articles predicting the end of the world. She wants to meet him, but why would a woman of such immense power care about an exiled writer standing at the edge of oblivion?
Perhaps the answers lie within the classified files connected to Olivia Roy, a ruthless Swiss consultant. These files scatters through the terrified crowd as she falls from a bridge.
Or, the answers may lie also within the schemes of Nasser Rajab and Bassam Al-Aswad, two former corrupt ministers trapped in Europe, betraying one another while their bodies become consumed by the violet plague.
Or maybe in the suicide of Gawdat Bauer, the Turkish officer devoured by his own crimes. He chooses death rather than facing the victims who have risen again before him, returning to haunt him.
Cosmic dust does not merely destroy bodies, it also awakens disturbing consequences, unfinished vengeance, and buried secrets. It transforms victims into avengers, and executioners into prey.
Back in Bahrain, Ahmed’s wife got infected by the plague and dies in an accident. While his daughters, Maram and Nada, got sick and became alone. They desperately attempt to reach him across a desert ravaged by the cosmic storm.
In Milan, Ahmed receives a message from his exiled friend Mohammed Jassim in London. Mohammed refuses to die alone and decides to join him whatever the cost.
Somewhere between heaven and earth, NASA prepares a mad unthinkable mission, destroying the galaxy responsible for the deadly dust.
The countdown has begun…
Within Milan’s suffocating alleyways, beneath a sky raining orange fire, Ahmed will finally confront Colonel Ghazi Fallah. Face to face in an abandoned café, both former prisoner and torturer meet for the final time. Who will walk away alive?
What will Mario Vitali do when he discovers that Sofia died after poisoning a former ambassador in revenge for Ahmed?
Tea with Mario Vitali is far more than being just a novel telling a story about the end of the world. It is a hallucinatory fresco of exile, memory, and impossible redemption. It’s a metaphysical thriller in which cosmic dust becomes a mirror reflecting the violence buried deep within us.
It’s a devastating epic that asks: Can humanity survive the end of the world when we already carry hell within ourselves? Do we have the power to forgive the unforgivable when the world itself is collapsing?
Between Milan, Bahrain, London, Afrin, and Dubai, the novelist, Ahmed Goma’a, weaves a staggering tale inhabited by refugees, torturers, ruthless businesswomen, and magnificent outcasts.
In this novel, every character fulfills its destiny and carries their own private apocalypse long before the sky itself ignites. As at the centre of this chaos, burns one haunting question:
When everything collapses, what remains of our humanity?!
“A tea party at the end of the world.”
Quite simply, this is an unforgettable novel.”
“A masterpiece of narrative tension in which the cosmic and the intimate unite in a terrifying dance.”
Loutes Publishing 