When Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector visited Egypt for the first time and stood before the Sphinx, she famously reflected, “I did not decipher her (the Sphinx). But neither did she decipher me.” Like many writers and novelists before her, she found Egypt to be a place that resists easy understanding; a country she could only make sense of through her own elusive, enigmatic writing. And that same sense of mystery is what has long drawn writers, thinkers, and artists from around the world to Egypt, from English novelist E.M. Forster, who wrote deeply about Alexandria, to Italian-American author André Aciman, whose work often returns to the memory of Egypt as both a real and imagined homeland. But a country alone is not always enough to spark great writing; it also takes a quiet mind and the right setting, a space where thoughts can flow freely and the words come as if they have been waiting to be written. Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, for example, often found that kind of calm at Café Riche, nestled in the heart of Downtown Cairo. While cafés are often celebrated as the traditional spaces…
