Customer Reviews

Autumn Quail

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A high placed officer looses his job after the Nasser revolution of 1952 in Egypt, because during his office he received some 'presents', as nearly everybody in some places did.
His lover leaves him. He cuts all ties with his acquaintances, becomes an alcoholic, fathers a child with a prostitute but doesn't recognize it. Will he, after all, escape out of the prison of his previous life and make the jump to a new one?
Read this beautiful story about " ... quail ... swooping in to land exhausted at the end of their long, predestined, illusory heroic flight."
A reflection on the impact of a national revolution on the life of a citizen.

This book is terrific for Western students as an introduction to Arabic literature & culture. The only book that I've liked better as a teacher of high school literature is Mahfouz's _Midaq Alley_. That text keeps the typical high school student's attention better because of the multiple storylines.

This is a terrific companion book that I've used with advanced students who can read _Midaq Alley_ quickly. It offers a bit more mature of a take on the dissolving social structure of modern Egypt by following a government worker who exhibits all of the tendencies of a post-modern, quasi-existentialist man searching for meaning.