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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A significant testimony of modern Egyptian history, June 11, 2003
This review is from: The Day the Leader Was Killed (Paperback)
The Day the Leader Was Killed is a succinct but significant work in contemporary Egypt. Naguib Mahfouz, through his sober and lyrical prose, has skillfully woven one of the darkest political backdrops in Egyptian history into his novel. Sealing off the seventies and reaching the threshold of a new decade, President Anwar al-Sadat implemented the Infitah, an open-door economic policy that would expedite the country forward to modernization. Like many of Mahfouz's works, this story is told in alternating first-person narratives by three characters--Muhtashimi Zayed, a pious, retired family patriarch; his grandson Elwan Fawwaz Muhtashimi; and Elwan's strong-willed, beautiful fiancée Randa Sulayman Mubarak. The story builds upon around this middle-class family and through the family's perspective zooms a picture of the social, economic, religious, gender and interpersonal aspects of the larger society in Egypt. For the patriarch, who devoted his whole life to prayers and religious rituals, his life was nothing but loneliness. He was especially despondent that the younger generation drifted from the Koran to whose life made a substantial influence. The old man could not forget "the woes of the world" (25) when he thought of his beloved grandson. Randa, like all her female contemporaries, faced gender challenges and the clash between traditional values and modern ideals. The novelette evokes the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat on October 6, 1981. Sadat was saluting troops at the annual military parade when a team of assassins began firing weapons and throwing grenades into the reviewing stand. Sadat, along with 20 others was instantly killed in the deadly attack. The underlying cause of the fatal massacre traced back to the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978, which led to a negotiated peace between the two countries in the following year. The historic agreement brought peace to Egypt but no prosperity. The economy still slumped with no trace of a turn-around. Poverty-stricken Muslims and Copts in Egypt rubbed in friction and exploded into some gruesome round of violence in the Cairo slum. This is the very socioeconomic backdrop on which Mahfouz adroitly set his novel. Like the Cairo Trilogy and many of his works, Mahfouz captures and chronicles the most crucial of his own times. 4.0 stars.
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Three generations in modern Egypt, December 8, 2002
This review is from: The Day the Leader Was Killed (Paperback)
"The Day the Leader Was Killed," by Naguib Mahfouz, has been translated into English by Malak Mashem. The short author bio on the book's opening page notes that Mahfouz was born in Cairo, has received the Nobel Prize in literature, and "is the most prominent author of Arabic fiction published in English today." This novel takes place during the "Infitah," an "open-door" economic policy in place under Egyptian President Sadat. The story is told in alternating first-person chapters by three characters: Muhtashimi Zayed, a retired old man; his grandson Elwan; and Elwan's fiancee, Randa. Both Elwan's and Randa's families face economic troubles, and the young couple faces uncertainty regarding their own future. This novel is a fascinating look at modern Egyptian family life. I found it interesting that while the book deals with three generations of Egyptians, it is only characters from the youngest and oldest generations that actually "speak" directly to the reader. Mahfouz looks at the issues of gender, economics, religious faith, and family ties in the lives of these two families and the larger community. I was particularly moved by Mahfouz's portrayal of the old man's spiritual life; Muhtashimi Zayed is a Muslim in whose life the Quran is an important element. I was also intrigued by Mahfouz's exploration of the challenges faced by the modern young Arab woman, caught between contemporary ideals and traditionalism. Overall, a compelling multigenerational portrait.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"We are a people more given to defeat than to victory. The strain that spells our despair has become deeply ingrained in us..", September 30, 2009
This review is from: The Day the Leader Was Killed (Paperback)
Always focusing on aspects of Egyptian social and political history, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz here depicts three generations of one family as they try to survive the socially tumultuous period between the Six Day War with Israel in 1967 and the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. The loss of the Six Day War in 1967 was a national humiliation for Egypt, which lost the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, as a result. In 1973, President Anwar Sadat tried to regain the lost territories with a surprise attack that initiated the Yom Kippur War, but again Egypt failed to win a strong military victory. Sadat's willingness to negotiate with the Israelis, however, resulted in the Egyptians' regaining of the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for Egypt's recognition of Israel and the establishment of normal diplomatic relations under the Camp David Accords. It made him very unpopular at home.
This tumultuous period was also a time of enormous economic hardships. Sadat had turned away from the Soviets, with whom Nasser had had a close association, and had established the Infitah, his attempt to establish a free-market economy in the desperately poor country. As Elwan Fawwaz Muhtashimi, one of the main characters in this novel says, however, "For this we cursed him, our hearts full of rancor. Ultimately, he [Sadat] was to keep for himself the fruits of victory, leaving us his Infitah, which only spelled out poverty and corruption. This is the crux of the matter."
Alternating points of view among Muhtashimi Zayed, his grandson Elwan Fawwaz Muhtashimi, and Elwan's fiancée Randa Sulayman Mubarak, Mahfouz creates a novel which shows the domestic difficulties faced by educated Egyptian city-dwellers as they try to live their lives under this unpopular, less structured new economic system. Elwan and Randa have been engaged for eleven years, unable to marry because Elwan's salary is too low for him to save enough for an apartment, furniture, and the expenses of a family. Elwan and Randa both work for the same employer, and their relationship with each other and with their boss shows the stresses of their long engagement. The interrelationships between their two families also become tense, and as each narrator describes his/her own feelings, Mahfouz speeds ahead with his story, which at times feels as if it is moving in double-time toward its ironic conclusion.
Keeping the narrative firmly fixed on the everyday lives of his characters, Mahfouz shows the failures of the political system and the desperate acts to which some residents are driven by circumstance. Though the novella is short, Mahfouz provides a rare and often ironic vision of life in Cairo during the period which concludes with Anwar Sadat's assassination. As Elwan walks in the city that night, he sees" a trace of death on every passerby," but as he thinks about the assassination, he believes that "Tomorrow cannot be worse than today. Even chaos is better than despair." n Mary Whipple
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