Customer Reviews

Beginning & the End, The

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I enjoyed this book very much. I had read the Cairo Trilogy a short time before. As I started this book I wondered if I might not enjoy it because of having just read over 1000 pages of Mahfouz. I needn't have worried. B&E was a totally different story but in wonderfully similar setting and style. I kept thinking that it was almost a photographic negative of the Trilogy. I enjoyed it more having just read the 3 books, as I contrasted the family of Kamel Ali with the family of Abd al-Jawad. Good book.

"The Beginning and the End" is the story of the Kamel family in mid-1940's Egypt, left in poverty by the death of the father. Left to fend for themselves are the mother, Samira, her daughter Nefisa, and three sons, Hassan, Hussein and Hassanein. Hassan is a ne'er-do-well, a thug and drug dealer who lives on the margins of society. Hussein is a fundamentally decent individual, quiet, hardworking, caring and empathetic. We like him a lot better than his younger brother Hassanein, an arrogant, conceited go-getter and social climber who carves himself out a promising career in the military and doesn't care who he tramples on to reach his goals. The tragic figure in this family is the daughter Nefisa, cursed with a homely face that makes marriage an unlikely prospect, and doubly cursed with a rampant sexual appetite that has no sanctioned outlet whatever for an unmarried woman in a muslim society. Hassanein has no problem dumping his fiancee at the drop of a hat when he decides her family isn't of the class he aspires to belong to; he will disown his brother Hassan rather than be connected to petty criminal. But he's brought up short against his sister's descent into prostitution, and his solution shows him in all his appalling soullessness. "The Beginning and the End" shows us a family and a society torn apart by the conflict between tradition and modernity, especially in its depictions of a society in which women's lives are so circumscribed that they have nothing to look forward to except a marriage that may never materialize. Mahfouz is not a very profound writer, but his sympathy for his characters, including the most degraded, is evident; he empathizes, never moralizes, and shows us a convincing picture of a family in torment. I thought the translation was a good one; it's not stilted or overdone and it flows easily from one chapter to the next. Mahfouz has given us in this book an intriguing story of a family divided against itself.

I read this years ago, but it continues to haunt me. I went on to read his other popular family novels, and loved every single one of them, too. I find that I am always looking for books by him, about him, fiction and nonfiction. He has had a tremendous influence on my life and my own writing. He has motivated me to write stories that have what I would call metaphysical 'weight.' This novel is a great tragedy, and, yes, sad, but with his other books comes humor, too - a wry look at well-defined characters. The man is a metaphorical magician, I might add. Reading him is like riding the scales with a great opera star. Read everything by this stand-out writer. You can't go wrong.

It is so fascinating to read these reviews. How differently we all see things. I do appreciate some of the commentary here, such as those who spot problems with the translation and see overt politicizing from Mahfouz in this work. However, this book so captivated me, and the writing style is easy and fluid (I hate convoluted writing, and this is not like that at all). From the opening pages to the end, I was riveted by the plight of the Kamel family as they struggled through a life of poverty and humiliation in Cairo after the passing of their father/husband. Each of the characters just made my heart ache, and this was especially true of Nefisa. Poor Nefisa! And what courage she had, really. She deserved such a better life, as they all did.

This is a classic tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. I really recommend it, and look forward to reading the Trilogy, which is waiting for me on the shelf.

Written in 1942-43, first published in Arabic in 1949 and English in 1956, THE BEGINNING AND THE END portraits the struggles of a middle-class Egyptian family. The novel is a masterpiece of human compassion. Mahfouz's adroit, in-depth delineation of each character has enlivened the character. The widow, who is mother of four children, coped with the loss of her husband and poverty with stoic and unusual calmness. The sexually repressed daughter persists through poverty-stricken life and degrades herself as dressmaker. The family is indebted to the good-for-nothing eldest son Hassan who later on becomes narcotics trafficker and makes a living on a prostitute. Hussein the modest son is the lonely fighter soldier of this novel. Hussein discontinues his education after attaining baccalaureate and takes a job as a sixth-grade clerk in Tanta, away from Cairo. Then the youngest Hassanein gets his feet into War College and promotes to be an officer. Hassanein struggles with climbing the social ladder but concurrently suffers from this inner guilt of how his poverty-stricken past might threat his chance of marrying the Bey's daughter. So striking of the novel is its humanitarianism and sensitivity to human suffering that its tragic vision of life transcends the Egyptian locale and assumes universal significance. It reflects with sympathy and well-balanced pathos the material, moral, and spiritual problems of an Egyptian petit bourgeois family confronted with poverty during the Second World War. The novel is gloomy from beginning to end. Mahfouz has woven in this novel human compassion through astute description of each character. The never-ending misfortunes and humiliations of the Kamel family call us to sympathize.

Mahfouz writes a very involving tale of a family and how it deals with change. The main, male character is entirely dislikable and the main female character is tragic. So, really, it's pretty depressing, but a great story, nonetheless.

Not a book I'd recommend for those who haven't read Mahfouz yet. This is certainly the most depressing of his books. His other stories also have the 'despite all our efforts we're doomed to failure' sense to them, but this totally takes the cake. :) Read it after you've become acquainted with other Mahfouz novels like 'Midaq Alley' or 'The Miramir'.

This is a tale of a family, that sees troubles and disappointments from the beginning of the book. It is peopled with characters you have read about before, like the good for nothing brother, the sexually repressed daughter, the striving and ambitious son, the poor yet proud mother. Yet the story is woven in such a way as Mahfouz only can, so the tale, ordinary as it may seem about a poor family's never ending misfortunes and humiliations, continues to engage you from the first page to the last. If you haven't yet tried Mahfouz, you can start with this book. As a writer, he is a realist that ranks right up there with the best of them.

This book fascinated me. A slice of life in Egypt that most of us in the Western World will never understand or see. The motivations of the characters, their situations and values, all foreign but compelling. This was my first Mahfouz (certainly won't be my last) and I loved his writing style. Artful, realistic and fairly easy to breeze through considering it was a translation (by Mahfouz himself, I think). I finished the book and felt that I had known the characters. Lived in their world. Had been transported to their reality. Dark. Sobering. Real. Beautifully written. Read it!

Having seen the movie (yes there was an arabic movie based on this novel) and read the book, my convictions of Mahfouz as one of the 20th century great writers, has been doubly confirmed. I recommend this book to anyone who appreciates and understands human struggles.