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105 of 109 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Excellent Introduction to Egyptian Culture, April 13, 2002
Twelve years ago, I spent several months living in Egypt. I am an American woman, and at that time, I found much of the culture and behavior of Egyptians to be confusing. Since that time, I have married a Moroccan, and have lived in Morocco for the past ten years. I now feel that I understand much about Arab culture. Just recently, a friend recommended I read the Cairo trilogy. I began with Palace Walk, and haven't yet read the others. This book is SUPERB. Westerners have trouble understanding how Middle Easterners THINK. This book is so wonderful because it takes you inside the mind of each of the characters, in turn, chapter-by-chapter, showing you how each one of them thinks, and allowing you to see their motivations for their behavior. One person commmented in their book review that the majority of the book concentrated on the male characters. There is a reason for this. Egyptian society is mostly about men, not about women. Even as the society modernizes, the THINKING stays the same. Mahfuz has done a masterful character study of each character in the book, as they go therough their daily lives. Without yet having read the two subsequent books, I expect that I will get more in depth into the women's lives in Sugar Street, because this is the house to which the two female daughters have moved upon their marriages to two brothers. In the past, I have tried to read some other books by this author, and just couldn't get into them. These books are different. They really do merit the Nobel Prize. Reading them now, after being immersed in the Arab culture for 12 years, I see so many more things than I would have noticed had I read the books first. But living in this culture, I can see how accurate they are, and how the men really DO behave and think like the characters in these books! Aside from the all this, the story line is wonderful, too. I had trouble putting the book down after having read the first few pages. I recommend these books to anyone who would really like to understand the Middle Eastern culture.
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52 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Cairo Trilogy - Between the World Wars, March 10, 1998
The Cairo trilogy (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street) tells the story of a middle-class Egyptian family. The story opens during the allied occupation of Cairo during WWI and continues through Cairo of WWII when the Germans were defeated at El Alamein. Although the story can be read at several levels, the most interesting is its exposition of the lives of the family members. The father and his three sons enjoy the public life of school, work, and the clandestine life of coffee shops, bars, and brothels. The mother and daughters pass their days enclosed within a comfortable but emotionally stifling walled home and the internal life. The background of this family tale is set against the ongoing political struggles of the period, when Egypt was ruled by the British. Unless one is familiar with the political history of modern Egypt, much of this context is difficult to comprehend. Reading in English translation and in the context of a foreign culture, it is quite difficult to assess this work. I can only say that it reveals a culture and mindset which is quite foreign to me as an American reader. It is this alien atomosphere which is one of the work's main attractions. Nothing happens as one expects it to ... just like life itself. It also goes a long way to explain why the British occupiers didn't get it either. In conclusion, the writing in translation is sufficient to make us care about and suffer with the characters. Ultimately, that is reason enough to read.
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64 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sand in the Pages, April 30, 2001
I first read this book in Kuwait. My dog-eared copy still has sand in the pages, so they make a desert noise when I turn them. It always takes me straight back... Mahfouz is not easy for an American reader. We like to know what's about to happen, and we like the story to "get there" in a few strokes (witness Tom Clancy.) The language is beautiful--too beautiful for many Americans-- and the setting is so real, so evocative that I can smell Egypt when I'm reading this trilogy (or is that the sand again?) If you feel like you need to warm up to this series, I suggest that you start with "Miramar" or, better yet, "Arabian Nights and Days." Mahfouz's work is always allegorical; characters reflect the passage of their era, and the language is part of that reflection. Many other reviewers have complained that they "don't get the language"-- well, I can read Arabic as well, and I have stabbed at the original text before, so I can safely tell you that (like anything in the Middle East) language is *everything.* Once you understand that, you can start understanding the people who live there. This book begins the saga of a family in crisis. It isn't a single event, but a slow evolution brought on by the irrepressible challenge of modernity. Young people want to shake off old traditions...Adults misbehave in secret...And in Cairo, the home becomes a place where secrets are kept hidden from those within while it protects secrets on the outside. It is an allegory of the Egyptian soul in the age of independence. The trilogy metes these secrets out one by one, until the walls that "protect" inside and outside begin to crumble. People must make new lives and develop new self-identities. This is all the more important whan you consider that Mahfouz is something of a prisoner in his own home--radical Jihadists have threatened his life. He has lived a VERY long time, and seen everything Egypt has gone through, so no one is better qualified to write about his country's experience in the 20th century.
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