Sugar Street (The Cairo Trilogy) (Vol.1) [Paperback]

Naguib Mahfouz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 1998 | Series: The Cairo Trilogy

"Sugar Street", the climactic conclusion to Mafhouz's masterpiece trilogy, is the captivating portrait of a family struggling to change with the rise of modern Egypt. As Cairo shrugs off the final vestiges of colonialism, Ahmad Al Jawad has lost his power and surveys the world from a latticed balcony. Unable to control his family's destiny, he watches helplessly as his dynasty and the traditions he holds dear disintegrate before his eyes. But through Ahamd's three grandsons we see modern how Egypt takes shape. One grandson is a communist activist, another a Muslim fundamentalist, both working for what they believe will be a better world. And Ridwan, the inheritor of his father's charms, launches a political career aided by a homosexual affair with prominent politician.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nobel Prize winner Mahfouz's stunning portrait of a family in dissolution (first published in 1957) mirrors an Egypt trying to plunge into the modern world but beset by colonialism, a rigid class system and political oppression. The third volume of his Cairo Trilogy, the novel opens in 1935 as Egypt smolders under British occupation, and it extends through the war. Kamal, son of the gaunt, wasted patriarch, is a grade-school teacher and philosopher who veers between lusty debauches and reading Spinoza. One of his nephews, Abd Al-Muni'm, becomes a Muslim fundamentalist; another nephew, Ahmad, takes Marx as his prophet. These two diametrically opposed brothers will share the same fate--a jail cell. The inadvertent cause of their undoing may be another scion of the patriarch, young Ridwan, a closet homosexual whose liaison with a prominent politician apparently backfires. Tragedy, in this busy family drama, can mean anything from marrying below one's station to a massacre of protesters by English constables and Egyptian soldiers. Mahfouz's characters blaze with intensity, his Egypt pulsates with unresolved tensions.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

The final volume in Nobel laureate Mahfouz's magisterial Cairo trilogy takes the Abd al-Jawad family from a rising tide of nationalist sentiment in 1935 through the darkness and confusion of WW II, as Britain defends an Egypt officially neutral. Yet national politics, for all its importance as background accompaniment here (as in Palace Walk and Palace of Desire), is usually kept just offstage--``They say that Hitler has attacked,'' old family servant Umm Hanafi announces halfway through, and matriarch Amina's final illness coincides with a bombing raid--as Mahfouz continues to dramatize the emergence of modern Egypt through ailing family head Ahmad Abd al-Jawad's family--his sons, sensualistic Yasin and scholarly Kamal; his daughters, prematurely aged widow Aisha and settled wife and mother Khadija; and his five grandchildren. As perennial bachelor Kamal methodically visits his father's favorite brothel and frets about whether to marry, the focus of the trilogy shifts from Palace Walk to Khadija's home with Ibrahim Shawkat on Sugar Street, where the couple's sons--Abd al- Muni'm, turning toward fundamentalist Islam, and increasingly committed Communist Ahmad--argue about their duty to the country and the nature of Egyptian society, but both end meeting the same fate. Meanwhile, Yasin's son Ridwan rises rapidly through the ranks of the civil service with the aid of magnetic, homosexual Pasha Isa, and their sister Karima, like Aisha's daughter Na'ima, prepares to receive the inevitable wedding proposal--though both times from a surprising source. Individual episodes--Ahmad Abd al- Jawad's hazy awareness that his friends are all dying; Kamal's abortive romance with Budur Shaddad, sister of his far-distant first love Aida; and his final tormented guilt over his moral paralysis--show Naguib's Tolstoyan economy at its most dramatic, though the third generation of his family makes a more muted impression than the first two. Mahfouz writes in the great tradition of the 19th-century novel from Balzac to Buddenbrooks. His trilogy shows just how rich and vital that tradition remains in the hands of a master. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 186 pages
• Publisher: Black Swan (January 3, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0552995827
• ISBN-13: 978-0552995825
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.8 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,127,207 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Saga Continues, July 17, 2003

By 

Imperial Topaz (Marrakesh, Morocco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sugar Street (The Cairo Trilogy, Vol. 3) (Paperback)

This is the third book in the Cairo Trilogy Series. By all means, do NOT try to read this book without having read Palace Walk or Palace of Desire FIRST--it would be like tuning in to a movie in the last half hour.

This book opens with the father and his wife in old age, in their 60's, their children in middle age, and the younger (third) generation entering their 20's. It continues the interesting saga. The book finishes shortly after both the father and his wife eventually die of old age.

This entire series is SLOW DRAMA (warning for those who like "action"), but one of the BEST pieces of literature I have ever read in my life. I have lived in the Middle East for 11 years, and this entire series REALLY shows the Middle Eastern culture and way of thinking.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Delicious, October 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Sugar Street (The Cairo Trilogy, Vol. 3) (Paperback)

Even some of the very best long novels or series rush somewhat disconcertingly towards a conclusion as though the writer is trying to tie up loose ends speedily and get on with life or the next project. But in Mahfouz's trilogy, the pace is perfectly matched to the time period. In Sugar Street, we are plunged into rapid social changes in Egypt during the thirties and the war -- tremendous upheavals in family structure, in women's roles, in politics, and not surprisingly in the lives of the characters. Someone wrote in these reviews that at least some of the characters suffered in unlikely ways. But this reviewer is probably not a surviver of a typhoid epidemic, or World War II, nor yet experiencing the delights and the disappointments of age. In my view, the Cairo Trilogy is a gem, and Sugar Street is a real pleasure. I may have to turn around and reread all three books before I can reshelve them.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended, April 10, 2004

By 

J. Jacobs - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Sugar Street (The Cairo Trilogy, Vol. 3) (Paperback)

The conclusion and final disintegration of the formerly powerful patriarchal family. Brings one through the third generation of tradegy, loss, and spiritual transformation and leaves almost every individual in misery. I enjoyed the first and final books in this trilogy and feel I came away with a better understanding of the conflicting forces at work in Egypt as well as the impact of culture and morality on individual actions and spirituality.