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Title: Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy) by Naguib Mahfouz ISBN: 0-385-26466-6 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 January, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (44 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Cairo Trilogy - Between the World Wars
Comment: The Cairo trilogy (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street) tells the story of a middle-class Egyptian family. The story opens during the allied occupation of Cairo during WWI and continues through Cairo of WWII when the Germans were defeated at El Alamein.
Although the story can be read at several levels, the most interesting is its exposition of the lives of the family members. The father and his three sons enjoy the public life of school, work, and the clandestine life of coffee shops, bars, and brothels. The mother and daughters pass their days enclosed within a comfortable but emotionally stifling walled home and the internal life.
The background of this family tale is set against the ongoing political struggles of the period, when Egypt was ruled by the British. Unless one is familiar with the political history of modern Egypt, much of this context is difficult to comprehend.
Reading in English translation and in the context of a foreign culture, it is quite difficult to assess this work. I can only say that it reveals a culture and mindset which is quite foreign to me as an American reader. It is this alien atomosphere which is one of the work's main attractions. Nothing happens as one expects it to ... just like life itself. It also goes a long way to explain why the British occupiers didn't get it either.
In conclusion, the writing in translation is sufficient to make us care about and suffer with the characters. Ultimately, that is reason enough to read.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Heart of a Family, the Soul of a Country
Comment: I have had a copy of Palace Walk in my book pile for about 10 years, but finally got around to reading it. What a fool I was to have waited so long to enjoy such a perfectly written work of literary art! I suppose I was intimidated by the fact that it was about modern Egypt, but Mahfouz is such a good writer that his reader is brought into this world and; aside from a few confusing allusions here and there, the book is accessible to the Western reader as well as to a Middle Eastern reader. The characters are universal and at the same time, purely Egyptian.
This is a story of a family whose lives and fortunes mirror those of the country they live in. Egypt, in the years following World War I, is in turmoil, undergoing historical transition, moving painfully toward independence.
In the home of the Jawad family, the father, Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, a merchant, rules with stern, unrelenting dominance, while enjoying a secret, separate life of complete, selfish, sensual enjoyment. His obedient wife, Amina, on the other hand, serves him and her family as a whole in every capacity, unquestioningly, selflessly. His children, three sons and two daughters, fear and love their father and worship their mother. They live the life of a upper middle class Egyptian family.
But they, like their country, teeter on the brink of change. The black and white, unquestioning religious and social faith of the past is being replaced by a new world, one in which all the rules of the past are being called into question. This new world, with its turmoil, will exact a tragic price from this family.
Time passes, change occurs. Each member of the family reacts in his/her own way, reflecting the change in the country they live in.
The characters are each interesting, completely human, the story a tale well told. I am now 2/3 of the way through the second book in the trilogy, Palace of Desire, and my interest in the story and its characters has not flagged. I have no doubt that I will continue on the finish the trilogy, for I find this a fascinating read.
I'm just sorry I took so long to get around to it!
Rating: 5
Summary: He writes of us all.
Comment: This novel is the 4th Mahfouz that I have read and though I've loved them all, this one stands out as a masterpiece. At one level it is an historical interplay of the resistance to the subjugation of the Egyptian nation by the British at the end of the Ottoman Empire. Then there is the story of a family of powerfully drawn characters whose destinies are the subject of this first book- indeed all three books of this trilogy. Their lives, naturally are played out within the historical events and behind those cloistered doors where the matriarch, Amina, must stay overlong and dare not leave without permission. The daughters must never be seen, and yet one is so bold to attempt it. Hypocrisy and rigidity seem to be the ruling traits of the all-powerful father whom the children both worship and dread. Ironically, by the end of the novel, privy to his inner thoughts, my Western mind could accomodate this absolute tyrant whose equal in life or literature I have not met. Indeed, I never felt that I could not understand these otherwise historical, unfamiliar people, they were all well within my grasp. The author wrote them to be lived with.
But the most breathtaking moments in this book came with Mahfouz writing about the universal conditions of life without psychology or intellectualization. He uses Islam for description- yes- but he uses his soul and experience far more. When a child has a fright for instance- a mother says- it isn't transitory- but like a kind of halo where bats congregate- where the jinn enter and where evil spirits damage a life. Isn't this PTSD? Without the psychobabble that erases the true meaning of how pain keeps on leaving you open to more of it? The man can truly transcend cultures- he writes of all of us.
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Title: Palace of Desire (Cairo Trilogy II) by Naguib Mahfouz ISBN: 0385264682 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 January, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Sugar Street (The Cairo Trilogy, 3) by Naguib Mahfouz, William Maynard Hutchins, Angele Botros Samaan ISBN: 0385264704 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 January, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Justine (Alexandria Quartet) by Lawrence Durrell ISBN: 0140153195 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin ISBN: 0151836000 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 06 May, 1991 List Price(USD): $32.00 |
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Title: Cairo: The City Victorious by Max Rodenbeck ISBN: 0679767274 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 22 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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