Cities of Salt [Paperback]

Abdelrahman Munif (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 17, 1989

Banned in Saudia Arabia, this is a blistering look at Arab and American hypocrisy following the discovery of oil in a poor oasis community.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Originally published in Beirut in 1984, this multipage epic brings to life many of the political issues that have plagued the Mideast for most of this century. Set in an unnamed gulf country that could be Jordan sometime in the 1930s, the novel relates what happens to the bedouin inhabitants of the small oasis community of Wadi al-Uyoun when oil is discovered by Americans. Seen through the eyes of a large and varied cast of bedouin characters, the upheaval caused by the American colonization is shown in various manifestations, from the first contact with the strange foreigners ("Their smell could kill birds!" observes Miteb al-Hathal, who later leads a rebellion of Arab workers when the village of Harran has been made into an American port city) to confused and suspicious descriptions of the sinister "magic" tools brought by the Americanswhich are in fact bulldozers, automobiles, radios and telephones. The story unfolds at a stately pace over a timespan of many years and provides an endless stream of characters and events, each connected to the next by many threads of plot. Theroux's sensitive translation conveys the subtleties of ambiguity and nuance inherent to the Arab language and culture. Banned in several Mideast countries including Saudi Arabia, this is the first volume of a planned trilogy by a Paris-based Jordanian novelist who holds a law degree from the Sorbonne and a Ph.D. in oil economics from the University of Belgrade. Despite the Lawrence of Arabia setting, Munif writes from a unique vantage point; English-language readers have been given few opportunities before now to look at this situation through native eyes.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Banned in several Middle Eastern countries, this novel records the encounter between Americans and Arabs in an unnamed Gulf emirate in the 1930s. As oil exploration begins, the destruction of an oasis community amounts to "a breaking off, like death, that nothing and no one could ever heal." The promise inherent in the creation of a city divided into Arab and American sectors provides the novel's most striking revelation: here not merely two cultures, but two ages, meetand stand apart. Alternatively amused and bewildered by the Americans and their technological novelties, the Arabs sense in their accommodation to modernity the betrayal of their own traditions. Highly recommended, if only for its cross-cultural insights.L.M. Lewis, Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Vintage International ed edition (July 17, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039475526X
• ISBN-13: 978-0394755267
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.3 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,304 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Middle Eastern > Arabic

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60 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The source of the illness and the root of the problem", October 3, 2002

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cities of Salt (Paperback)

CITIES OF SALT is a highly unusual novel because unlike most, its main character is not a human being, but a city, even a country or a culture. Like the great Mexican muralists, Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros, Munif paints the painful, colorful, and confused story of the transformation of a whole society---like Chinua Achebe of Nigeria, he shows what happened when "things fell apart". No single character is found in every chapter,the focus constantly changes,yet the direction remains clear. Peter Theroux faced an immense task, I believe, though I do not know Arabic. He either had to capture the flavor of a language that uses proverbs, quotations from the Qur'an, and indirect approaches to topics and risk English speakers' incomprehension ... or turn the Arabic into more familiar English dialogue, based on general meaning, and utterly destroy the special nature of the text. I would say he has done a fantastic job. You have the feeling of being in another world, where people express themselves in ways unlike North America/Britain/Australia in 2002. It is a convention of Western novels that speakers understand each other, but we know, in real life, that that is not so. Munif recognizes that, especially in a situation of rapid culture change, one speaker may not understand what another is saying at all.

When the word "colonialism" is mentioned, we usually think of Africa, of India or Southeast Asia, or of the Spanish invasions of Central and South America. Secondarily we may (or should) remember the Anglo-Saxon deeds in North America and Australia. Even if we narrow the focus to the Middle East, our "take" on colonialism there usually derives from the British or French occupation of former Turkish territories. CITIES OF SALT, written in the 1980s, tells a story, in other words, that has seldom been brought to the world's attention, that is very far from twenty first century dialogue. This is amazing, this is tragic, because it seemed to me, by the time I had finished Munif's novel, that here lay so much of the origins of Al Qaeda and of Osama bin Laden. The American oil companies, with the agreement and active cooperation of the local emirs and ruling families, came to a society which was entirely unprepared for their arrival and totally uninformed about the consequences of Big Oil's operations. The novel opens with a description of a backwater oasis with a traditional way of life. After 120 pages, American bulldozers uproot all the trees and the inhabitants of Wadi al-Uyoun are exiled forever. Is this a potent metaphor or what ? A port is built on the coast, an airconditioned American compound erected behind barbed wire with gardens and swimming pools, while the newly-recruited Arab workers live in stifling, fetid dormitories. The relationship between Arab and American, worker and boss, is the usual capitalist one, but this (probably eastern Saudi Arabia) is a deeply traditional Islamic society with entirely different values. The characters that oppose change and so-called modernization most vehemently are driven away or killed, but they remain, like spirits, like echoes of the solid, understandable past, for the many people caught in a whirlwind of change. Like those exiled or murdered princes of medieval Europe, people believe that they may appear when most needed. Munif traces the rise of different classes, the change in mentality owing to new social circumstances, the arrival of doctors, merchants, and transportation companies, and the beguiling of the rulers. [Women play almost no role in the novel, nor do Americans ever appear as anything more than unfathomable aliens.] The Americans came for their own profit, the rulers conspired to allow them a free hand in return for unimaginable wealth, (p.595 "was he their emir, there to defend and protect them, or was he the Americans' emir ?" Munif and his books are banned in Saudi Arabia). Some of the people shared in the new wealth, but they were made to feel outsiders in their own land. Many people got nothing. The long-term result of this colonial penetration, so ably and lyrically portrayed in this novel, is known to us all.

CITIES OF SALT, though without love or sex and without strong protagonists, is a lively, colorful, unique novel well-worth reading and free of diatribe. I often thought of the Brazilian writers, Guimaraes Rosa and Amado, who brought whole worlds to life, onto the world stage. Munif has done a similar job. This novel should be much more widely known than it is.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Modern Arabic Epic Novel, August 18, 2007

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Reader in Tokyo - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Cities of Salt (Paperback)

This novel was published in Arabic in 1984 and in English in 1987. It's only the first section of a five-book Arabic-language work that totals some 2,500 pages, covers seven decades and is said to be the longest novel in modern Arabic literature. The second and third sections have been published separately as The Trench and Variations on Night and Day. It appears that the fourth and fifth sections haven't been published yet in English.

This first book covers the period roughly from the 1930s to 1950s. It begins with the pious, poor inhabitants of an oasis in the desert whose peace and social harmony are disrupted by the discovery of oil by American researchers who've been invited into the country. Six hundred pages later, it ends following a mass strike over injustice in the coastal city that's grown up around the pipeline to the interior. In between, it shows the impact of modernization brought about by the development of oil, from the locals' point of view. And the resentment caused by the presence of non-Muslims, the increasing materialism and loss of spiritual and communal values, and a backward, paternalistic local government that ignores the attendant social problems.

The technologically superior Americans, despite their practical competence and good intentions, are depicted in this book ultimately as the real villains, because of their foreignness, utter lack of understanding of the inhabitants' world, and the negative effects of the modernization they've set in motion.

A recurring pattern in the novel is that none of the parties involved comprehend the factors behind events that tie them all together, and none make an effort to understand the other. (One individual who's something of an exception disappears into the desert early in the novel.) For the most part, the locals don't grasp clearly the significance of what the Americans are doing. The latter make no effort to comprehend the locals and their motivations or actions, unless they perceive a threat to the benefits of oil. And the local ruler spends much of his time away from both in his newly constructed palace, obsessed with the workings of dazzling imports like the telescope, stethoscope, radio, automobile and telephone.

The author, who was also an oil economist and political activist, is considered a pioneer of writing that reflected social, economic and political developments in the modern Arab world. A member/associate of the socialist, pan-Arab nationalist Ba'ath Party until the early 1980s, he wrote partly to counter official history, which he believed up to that point had served mainly the interests of the West and the ruling governments and ignored ordinary people's experience.

He based a number of occurrences in the novel on real events in Saudi Arabia, although the country in his novel goes unnamed. There are differences from reality, though: the local ruler in the book is depicted as a buffoon rather than a strong, independent leader in his own right. And there's nothing in the book like a fundamentalist movement that gained power with the state and rising oil revenues, as did the Wahhabis.

I agree with other reviewers that this book is important for showing a widespread point of view in the Arab world concerning relations with the West and the impact of the oil economy on local values. Tragically, this view is characterized mainly by a sense of victimization and religious profanation. In those respects this book, written a quarter-century ago, can be regarded as sounding prophetic themes. Yet the author was committed to socialism, and from this novel alone it doesn't appear that he viewed radicalized religion as the solution.

I wasn't enchanted by the style, which was deliberate in pacing, with lengthy narrations and digressions, said to be influenced by traditional oral storytelling modes, and with an ending full of magic realist visions. Or by the characters, many of whom were stand-ins for various pieties and evils. And I found it difficult to believe the depiction of the paradise on earth that was the oasis before the discovery of oil. In some ways, for example its black-or-white morality and the lack of depth to its character-symbols, this novel reminded me of Soviet proletarian works from the 1930s, with a difference being that its model society seemed placed in the romanticized past rather than the future. How the author reconciled this idealization of the past with his own socialist commitment is maybe something that becomes clear in the later installments of this work.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cities of Salt Turning to Tears, May 21, 2001

By 

Elizabeth Hendry (New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cities of Salt (Paperback)

I can see why this book has been banned in Arab countries. Cities of Salt details the transition of an unnamed Arab emirate from how it had apparently been functioning to a current, oil producing state. The story, taken as a whole is heartbreaking. The story begins before oil is discovered, and tells a tale of a generous, yet human, people. Their Emir, unbeknownst to them, allows some Americans into the country to test for oil and eventually, drilling takes place. On the way, people are driven out of their homes, villages are leveled, lives irrevocably, irretrievably changed. The old way of life is gone, and with it, the general pleasantness and generosity that had once been prevalent. The story is of mainly of a place, the characters only secondary, for their is no true protagonist, save the land. Characters play the lead for a time, but soon something happens, someone leaves, someone arrives and things change again. Cities of Salt is a moving and bittersweet story told in a matter-of-fact manner, a story which mourns the passing of a way of life, without being mournful itself.