Customer Reviews

Sugar Street

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This is the last installment of the Cairo trilogy, a saga spanning several generations of a family in Egypt during the first decades of the 20th century. Of the three books "Sugar Street" is the most political with the pace moving very quickly, there are time periods of about a year and more between most chapters.

After an intimate look into a Cairo family's life in Book 1 and Kamal's total stagnation in Book 2, caught between feeling and tradition versus rational thought and science, here there is much action in the outer world and larger political life. The three grandsons grow to maturity in a time when Egypt is breaking free of colonialism. One is a member of Muslim radical fundamentalist brotherhood, another a communist and the other, well...he too has followed his own path away from family tradition.

The Cairo trilogy and especially Book 3, Sugar Street can offer a great deal of insight into how attitudes in the Mid-East have been shaped.

I truly enjoyed this book. Being a muslim and an arab, I could identify with the characters and their dilemmas. I think that it would be of great benefit to the reader if they had a background knowledge of Egypt and Islam in general. The author assumes that the reader is from the Middle East, therefore he does not explain the significance of some of the words. All in all, Sugar Street is an excellent book that deserved its Noble Prize.

I do consulting in the refining and petrochemical industries and have, as a result, struck up several friendships with Arabs and Arab-Americans working in those facilities. Once I asked several acquaintances if there were are well-regarded Arab writers with good English translations available that could help me as an American better understand the modern Arab experience and worldview. Several recommended The Cairo trilogy (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street) by Naguib Mahfouz. It covers a time period that would provide an excellent overview into 20th century Arab experience both politically and socially, especially vis-à-vis Arab/Western interaction. It is a family saga and therefore provides a good view of modern Arab family life and the affects modernization has had on it. It's urban setting and action would be more familiar to Americans than a more rural tale. The books are written from a genuinely Arabic sensibility language-wise-a sensibility not overly degraded by translation. And, finally, it would be a "less difficult" introduction to Arabic culture than other possibilities.

It should be noted that "less difficult" is not that same as "easy" or "easier". This marks an important distinction, one underscored by these books. Arabic language, society and sensibilities are colored much more by nuances and multiple permutations on a few basic themes than is true in Western society.

Naguib Mahfouz is a Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian novelist who adeptly and adroitly captures these nuances and evokes a genuine feel for-if not true understanding of-their intrinsic roots within the Arabic weltanschauung.

Clearly, based on the reviews to date for this book, there are many who have difficulty with this dynamic. These are the folks who probably are unable to split hairs and see the distinction between "less difficult" and "easier". If you are that sort of person I have to say quite honestly that you are going to be both frustrated and bored by this book or any of the series.

If you are the sort who relishes a challenge, truly wants to try to get a feel for and understand Arabic social and political views and don't mind putting a bit of effort into that undertaking, you will find reading any or all of these books a rewarding experience indeed.

In the third part of "The Cairo Trilogy", life of the Abd al-Jawad family goes on. Amina's body now withered, her hair white, ill health and grief having altered her considerably. Her diligence and her capacity for running the household are now gone. She no longer pays attention to her home except for the services to her husband al-Sayyid Ahmad, once a vigorous man in full swing. He now suffers from high blood pressure and he had to give up many of the pleasures of life - drinks, women and good food. In fact, many months before dying, he is completely bedridden, a particularly humiliating situation for a man with such a strong ego.
Here Mr Mahfouz casts a compassionate glance at the irony of life which makes elderly people become utterly dependant on others, as they used to be when they were infants. For Kamal, now thirty-six, it is sad to see his family age, all the more since he refuses to get married and thus spends a lot of time aloof and lonely. Aiming at becoming a true intellectual, Kamal often collides with doubt and struggles with instincts and passions and is becoming "an emotionally crippled recluse". He often broods about his youth, his love for Aïda and the eternal loss of the enchanting past.
But there are also reasons to rejoice as the younger generation takes over and ascends in society. Marriages take place, careers are planned. Mr Mahfouz splendidly portrays this cycle of life in which the old generation gives way to the boisterous and cheerful young one. This is shown in the moving final scene when Kamal and his brother Yasin enter a store where the former buys several items for his daughter's baby while the latter buys a black necktie he will need when the mournful day of his mother's death arrives...

This is the last book of the Cairo Tilogy,which should stand along side of Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga.
As with any work that is squarely founded upon an extensive exposure and understanding of the human nature that is found throughout the world, the reader will find an Egyptian writer who sympathetically and deftly presents a family from the middle east, faced with the same problems that plagued English families throughout the victorian era and later.
Throw in the problems of occupation by the British to further complicate a father's problems with educating and marrying his sons, and insurinng the happiness of his daughters through marriage to fiscally sound and loving men from backgrounds similar to his family's, and the reader will realize we're all the same the world over. I was sorry to reach the end of the last book, and I'm jealous of anyone who is about to read the Cairo Trilogy for the first time.

Here is Mahfouz's great finale to his classic Cairo Trilogy, an under-the-radar series that, perhaps due to its origins, is not as well known as other major works but is every bit as searching and distinguished. Here the war-torn Cairo of WWII in Palace of Desire is more subdued, at a dubious peace with the British but still rife with underground political intrigue. The al-Jawad family is growing older, and the younger generation is coming into their own and the story's forefront. Like the previous two novels, this is a very humane book, short on action and plot twists but full of numerous moments of perception, with deep philosophical undertones throughout. Here they are mostly of aging and regret, and there is a somber tone always in the book's atmosphere. What works best in this book is the character of Kamal, lovestruck in the previous book but here wiser and resolute yet profoundly melancholy. His siblings are not as filled-out here; Yasin winds down with a tolerant wife, Khadija is a rather one-note motherly figure, and poor Aisha lives a life filled with pervasive grief. The younger generation gives the book a bit of hope though, yet through this ray of light lies the book's primary weakness. Khadija and Yasin's children were difficult for me to differentiate, and as characters were not written with the same sharpness that the al-Jawad kids were. Also the timeline here seemed to move at a noticeably quicker pace than in the previous two books, making it difficult to keep tabs on everyone's age and making their growing infirmities come as a bit of a shock. In any case it is a must for fans of the previous two books, and the ending itself is subtle and first-rate.

i read all of the trilogy and i do not think that there is one which is better from the rest.
mr. mahfouz succeeded in inviting me to the not so clean streets of cairo into the patriarchal society which seems centuries away from our own.
read all three.