This was so hard to take.

I understand that it was an exploration of the motives of men seeped in misogynistic cultural binds, but they don’t even try to make amends or reparations. They just go with it. I think that’s part of Mahfouz’s genius, though; he doesn’t try to make this something it wasn’t. He tells it like it was, like it is, and he allows each character to explore their own cynicism and address their own conflicts with excessive internal dialogue that makes them face truth and choose what to do with it.

Egypt in this time of the British occupation is a sad backdrop for a sad story. There are glimmers of hope along the way, or we wouldn’t continue reading. They are planted between relationships and in the minds and hearts of a select few progressive people, and there is the promise of perhaps a going against the grain in future installations with this family.

I find Mahfouz’s writing absorbing and beautiful and desperately depressing; a welding of overwhelming emotion and a deliberate dragging downwards. He is adept at this clinging pull, but in this novel, I think he was just getting started.

If this is the ‘before he was awarded’, I definitely need to read one of his prize winners…