Customer Reviews

In the Eye of the Sun

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This was the second of Four Souief Books and her first full-length work. It is a real treat, very well conceived and written. It is an excellent portrayal of Egyptian society and the various conflicting influences affecting the Egyptian character.

Ahdaf Souif paints each and every character in the novel in a "real" fashion, they are all very plausible in their strength, peculiarities and humanities; the goodies and the "badies" alike, are all well rounded. This does not only apply to Asya, Seif, Crissie and the other main personalities, but to the many minor ones too. No cardboard here!

In part this is a story of young idealistic Egyptian girl, Asya, growing up in the quasi-socialist days of Nasser. Ahdaf Souief paints a remarkably accurate picture of life in Cairo during that era. The 1967 Six days war takes place, dreams are shattered and many lives are torn, but largely life goes on. Asya's love story in Egypt moves with her abroad as she goes to the North of England for post Graduate education. Again Souief paints a remarkable detailed and accurate picture of life in the North of England in that era. Asya struggles and adapts with life in the west. She is so very firmly anchored in her roots, upbringing, and culture; yet she still wades into The West.

Asya strengths and weaknesses as a human being dominate much of the second half of the book, all written in a gripping language that makes you feel you are right there, part of the scene. At times I wanted to shout out "leave him.. throw him out .. he's no good ..don't you see ..." or "call him ..tell him ... don't put up with that .."

Souif painted an outstandingly accurate picture of how a wedding, a funeral, school life and even war and politics feel like in Egypt. Souif was specially masterful at the way she weaved the funeral scene, with her superb translation of the Quran. I could actually picture myself in Etba in Cairo receiving the mourners.

Ahdaf Souif's mastery of both English and Arabic comes across in every word in the book. She loves both languages and takes and gives joy in illustrating their beauty without losing the theme of the book.

The book shed a great deal of light on how Egyptian view not only themselves but also how they view the west, the Arabs and also Israel. It provides a very realistic look on how integrated Moslems and Christians are in City life in Cairo. (at least used to be , not really sure about now)

Aisha and Sandpiper are 2 other outstanding books by AS, if you enjoy this book, you will certainly like these 2. In a funny way, some of the stories from these 2 books are intertwined with In the Eye of the Sun. You will appreciate these 2 shorter books many times more after you have read this one.

The Map of Love, her most recent book 1999, was short listed for the Booker prize (and should have won it over Disgrace which is also a fantastic book with great insight on life at the other end of the Africa) , is an excellent book but not half as good or real as this book, In The Eye Of The Sun is a real treat. I was depressed when I finished it, I wanted more!

This is a very sad story, but it has been shaped into a very satisfying book. The writing is often remarkably beautiful. There are passages which could be pulled out and stand up on their own as vignettes, but the novel is also well structured, with subtle echoes of details occuring from one place to another. But this work does not merely impress with its technical skill. The characters live. The truth is, I liked this novel mostly because I liked Asya. I often did not understand why she did what she did, particularly why she endured what she endured, but I liked her mind, her observations, her sense of humor. In addition to all of this, the book seems to be a good orientation to recent Arab history, from an Arab perspective, something which adds to my interest in the work. It's been a few years since I read it and it's about time to read it again.

From a Jewish woman poin of view, totally devoted to the existence of the State of Israel, I could read the other side's opinions and attitudes without feeling offended or irrate. Just saddened. Ms. Soueif is too smart a writer to give it fanatic overtones. As far as the story is concerned, I couldn't put the book down. The dialogue and the characters are so real that I deeply cared for what happened to them. My God, this Saif, never wanting to have a conversation, became quite talkative when the pain was in his soul. And Asya, so emancipated and yet so impotent to take a strong stand against the lowest of men; compliant and scared not to hurt his feelings; totally paralyzed by her Middleeastern upbringing. Some things a woman just doesn't do... Oh, this book... I took pleasure in the smallest detail - doing the dishes, putting handcream on, metaphors and semantics, important and unimportant, they breathe life into this novel. It's one of the best I read in a long time. My only question is: do Saifs exist? I know there are plenty of Geralds, but except for Saif's aloofness that is real, his generosity and at the same time his disinterest in his wife - are they real? I wish I could personally congratulate the writer.

As a typical mid-American with no background into modern Egyptian history, I found this book a great insight into a far different world than what I was living during the 1970's. Almost as much as reading the book, I have enjoyed reading the reviews of this book especially from those who can relate so well. While the details were just overwhelming in places for me, they were the essence of the novel for others. There truly is a different way of viewing the world from the East and from the West. This book has helped me understand a bit more.

And although it was an insight into the modern Eastern woman's world, it was also so universal in theme. I could see so much of my husband of 30+ years in Saif. Maybe men are men whether they are from the mid-west or from the Middle East.

I would love to read more of Soueif's works (I did read Map of Love -- and thought it was wonderful) especially in light of what is happening in the Mid East today; the change in culture from the time Asya left Egypt to the time she returned was interesting to me. I want to know how a character like Asya is doing now in Egypt.

Thanks the the author for writing a insightful, interesting, and complex work, and thanks for those who from Asya's world who have written reviews. I appreciated reading your comments in order to verify what I thought I was getting from the book.

It was a great pleasure reading Ahdaf Soueif's In the Eye of the Sun. The dialogs between husband and wife are painfully real, and Asya's journey to self-realization makes me wonder if there is any reconciliation between Western and Islamic values, that are combined and deeply rooted in upper-middle and upper Egyptian classes, giving, and I will speak only for myself, endless conflicts. Ahdaf Soueif shows an exemplary awareness of the important political events that shaped the history of the region at the time, and accurately captures her generation's reaction to that. Asya's college years match our parents' accounts of a beautiful secular Cairo, and hints to the future change are not to be missed. A true masterpiece.

The most striking aspect of this novel is the candor with which Soueif treats sexual themes, a radical and refreshing departure from most novels and memoirs by contemporary Middle Eastern women writers. Asya's sexual awakening occurs on the riddling boundaries between East and West, her early life in Egypt and her adult life in England. The descriptions of her childhood and adolescent days in Egypt are heart rendingly beautiful. At over eight hundred pages, the book is a quite a tome, but utterly absorbing; I read it through in a matter of sittings! The politics she charts were only vaguely known to me, and so the book also functioned as a sort of primer on Egyptian and Palestinian history of this century. Truly groundbreaking!

"If you wish to hide something, hide it in the eye of the sun." So goes an old Egyptian proverb. In her novel IN THE EYE OF THE SUN, Ahdaf Soueif portrays a world where people are never quite free to reveal what is in their minds and hearts; where intimacy, though real, is experienced at a distance; and where the elephant in the living room must never, ever, be directly acknowledged.

This novel -- published several years before the Booker-nominated MAP OF LOVE, but far superior to it -- is the story of a young Egyptian woman's coming of age in the late 1960s through the late 1970s. Asya numbers among those exceedingly rare characters in literature: a woman in three dimensions. A woman with a lively interest in politics and literature. A woman with a career. But a woman who also takes time to fuss over her clothes and hair. A woman who soaks her elbows in lemon juice to keep her skin soft. A woman, in short, who you could imagine as your best friend. After nearly 800 pages of Asya's life in all its luxurious detail, I still wanted to know more about her. I want to know what happened next. One can only hope Soueif will publish a sequel.

Some reviewers have complained that there is too much detail in this novel. I disagree. Soueif brings a world to vivid life. After reading IN THE EYE OF THE SUN, I felt I had really been to Egypt during the Six Day War and the ongoing conflict with Israel. I felt I had experienced growing up among Cairo's upper classes. I could picture myself sipping iced fruit drinks with Asya and her girlfriend in the heat of the Egyptian sun. Or attending the graveside memorial of a family member and hearing the Qur'an recited as though I already knew the words. Reading this novel, I knew how it felt to be a stranger in the cold north of England. And how it felt to return several years later to an Egypt where Islamic fundamentalism was rearing its head in the previously secularized and westernized university of her earlier youth. Most of all, I could imagine the inner turmoil and pain of Asya's married life with the distant and emotionally brutal Saif.

Asya's troubled marriage to Saif is the central story of this novel. Soueif perfectly captures the essence of so many women's experience with an uncommunicative, cold and distant man. She also, intriguingly, through the story of Asya's disastrous affair with the needy and insecure Gerald, reveals why Asya never lets go of her dignity in front of Saif. In opposition to any western feminist agenda, Soueif also lets Asya take her blows from Saif in character. That is to say, Asya feels she deserves them.

My only criticism of this novel is that the first few pages fail to draw the reader in. I picked it up several times, started reading, and set it aside. But after the first 20 pages or so, I quite literally couldn't put it down. I will be looking forward to whatever Soueif does next.

I really did enjoy reading this book--Soueif's masterful descriptions and fascinating characters make this easy--however, I found that I really did not sympathize much with the protagonist, Asya. I should have, though. Asya is growing up in the 70s in a Muslim country that is experiencing internal and external political turmoil. Asya was not raised as a traditional Muslim; her parents are intellectuals who seem to merely go through the motions where their religious lives are concerned. They seem more worried about following social constructs than religious ones. Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se. However, it does seem to cripple Asya in some ways, as she is too high and mighty to be really Egyptian, yet she is too Egyptian to be truly European. She doesn't understand what she wants to be, let alone what she should be. She looks to her mother, girlfriends, and husband for guidance, but each gives a different answer. Plus, she has no internal moral compass to guide her. She was bound to let someone down, including the reader, who comes to want nothing but the best for her in her life. That said, this novel was amazing. Soueif was really able to capture this character well, as well as the other characters. But you should be careful not to mistake the Egyptian characters of Asya's family and friends in her social stratum as typical Egyptians. But I found myself longing for a different story as I read this one--a story of devout Muslim people trying to live Muslim, Arabic lives in a changing country, a changing world. The characters in this novel are very Western in their thoughts and desires--a result of years of occupation by Western nations. What's more, the narrator and Asya both appear to have contempt for devout Muslims and for country people, and they look to Europe for all things civilized and proper, and from what I've read, that is not an unusual opinion for modern Egyptians of the upper classes. How unfortunate they seem to me as I consider the pyramids...

This is the second of Four Souief Books so far. It is a real treat, very well conceived and written. It is an excellent portorial of Egyptian society and the various coflicting influences affecting the Egyptian charachter. Ahdaf Souif paints each and every charecter in the novel in a "real" fashion, they are all very plausable in their strength, pecularities and humanities; the goodies and the badies alike are all well rounded. This does not only apply to Asya, Seif, Crissie and the other main personalities, but to the many minor ones too.

Souif painted an outstandingly accurate picture of the how a wedding, a funeral, school life and even war and politics feels like in Egypt. Souif was specially masterfull at the way she weaved the funeral scene, with her suprb translation of the Quran. I could actually picture myself in Ateba in Cairo receiving the mourners.

Ahdaf Souif's mastery of both English and Arabic comes across in every word in the book. She loves both languages and takes and gives joy in illustrating their beauity without losing the theme of the book.

The book shed a great deal of light on how Egyptian view not only themselves but also how they view the west, the arabs and also Israel. It provides a very realistic look on how integrated moslems and christians are in City life in Cairo.( at least used to be , not really sure about now)

Aisha and Sandpiper are 2 other outstnading books by AS, if you enjoy this book, you will certianly like these 2. In a funny way, some of the stories from these 2 books are intertwined with In the Eye of the Sun. You will appreciate these 2 shorter books many times more after you have read this one.

The Map of Love, her most recent book 1999, was short listed for the Booker prize (and should have won it over Disgrace which is also a fantastic book with great insight on life at the other end of the Africa) , is an excellent book but not half as good or real as this book, In The Eye Of The Sun is a real treat. I was depressed when I finshed it, I wanted more!

I found myself caught up in this work from the very begining. Soueif's beautiful writing made it very easy to work my way though nearly 800 pages with ease.

As a woman who is involved with an Egyptian, this book shed light on the complicated personality of an Egyptian man which can be so foreign to a western woman. There were parts of this book which were so painful I could barley stand to read them. The author "takes you there" and you feel the agony and pain which comes from a dissolving marrage. I felt trapped along with Asya as she was dealing with that idiot Gerald. I was always saying to myself 'Get out!!! what are you doing with this guy?'

I love Ahdaf Soueif's writing had have also read "The Map of Love"