Customer Reviews

The Thief and the Dogs

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3 star:		(1)
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This novel, by one of the world's premier fiction writers (Nobel Prize, 1988), is an interesting combination of Western and Middle-Eastern traditions. The prose style is a mixture of Camus' "The Stranger", Hesse's "Siddartha", and Graham Greene's "A Burnt-Out Case". There is a hard-boiled aspect that reminds the reader of Graham Greene's best "entertainments" and a philosophical strand similar to the French existentialists. Mix in a little Sufist wisdom and Egyptian scenery, and you've got a rather interesting literary mixture.

I advise any fan of world literature to give it a try. It's short and fast-paced, so the time investment will only be a day or two.

First published in Egypt during the sixties, another great novella from Naguib Mahfouz, this one a riveting page turner narrated as a streaming flow of consciousness from a criminal mind.

The story opens with Said Mahran, just released after years in prison, burning up with hatred and obsessed with the idea of revenge on his ex-wife Nabawiyya and her new husband and his old friend Ilish. When he sees the success of one of his old cronies, Rauf Ilwan, he hates him too and desires vengeance. He seems driven by circumstance, yet later when he is given opportunities to change, he does not take them, knows only how to be a thief and nothing else. He is unable to change, blaming everyone except himself for his problems and soon seeks out "Tarzan" and his sleazy club out in the dark of the desert, drawn back into the criminal underworld.

A psychological study of someone bent on self-destruction.

In The Thief and the Dogs; Naguib Mahfouz explores some of the disappointments in the failure of the revolution to bring real change. His characters live in a world rich in emotional and political colour. Anyone can identify with their dilemmas, their passions and their frustrations. The Thief and the Dogs deals with the experience of Said Mahran, a burglar and smalltime political activist who goes to jail before the revolution in 1952 and emerges four years later to find the world he used to know has completely changed. Both in personal and political terms Said feels betrayed: his wife has married his old sidekick Ilish, and his former political mentor Ra'uf has given up his student radicalism for a comfortable job with a newspaper.

This is the story of a man who had stolen for the Revolution. Released from jail in post-revolutionary times, he continues to blame society for his ills, reverting to his old, thieving habits, and brings himself to self destruction. A fascinating, but not a very likeable, character.

Stories remind me of people. Something in their style calls to mind the mannerisms of family and friends. Self-important historical epics make me think of a lumbering middle-school teacher. The upper-crust comedies of P.G. Wodehouse take me back to a certain night out on the town with my little-black-dress-clad, then-future wife. Having just finished Naguib Mahfouz's The Thief and the Dogs, I find myself thinking of the Florida redneck who taught me to handle a gun, a man as hard and direct as the bullets he shot.

The years Said Mahran spent in an Egyptian jail did little to cure him of his affinity for burglary. Instead, they gave him a new vice -- revenge. Newly free, he wants the lives of his ex-wife and her lover, the two people who turned him over to the police. And when an overture to a former revolutionary friend turned nouveau riche falls flat, Said adds another name to his murderous list. He gets a gun from the owner of a less-than-reputable café and love from a faithful whore, but a fatal mistake quickly turns everyone else against him. A stray slug can take more than a life; it can kill a man's most-cherished plans.

Mahfouz's slim little novel is less interested in the niceties of vengeance than in examining the consequences of an ill-aimed life. Said soon moves beyond mere retribution and starts striking out at anyone and everyone who gets in his way. A gentle Sufi mystic chides him, yet Said is so wrapped up in bitterness that he can't grasp the ruin that envelops him. It doesn't matter how hot your rage burns when the whole world is nipping at your heels.

Newly released from prison, professional thief Said Mahran finds his previous life torn asunder. His wife, having spent all "the loot," has married a close friend; Said has been cut off from his daughter; his mentor, a journalist, has sold out to the temptations of a "plush office suite" and a "lovely villa" on the river. These acts of betrayal inspire Said to bitter thoughts and vindictive acts--and to the end, he remains the unredeemed casualty of his own crimes.

Given its plot, the crime-noir tone of Mahfouz's psychological novel isn't surprising; it is even strikingly reminiscent of Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock." Like Greene's wannabe criminal wunderkind Pinkie Brown, Said seeks both hesitant comfort from a familiar religious sanctuary and uneasy shelter in the arms of a woman, but he ultimately proves beyond the redemptive powers of religion or companionship. His sources of refuge--the courtyard of family spiritual mentor Sheikh, the tavern owned by the morally neutral Tarzan, the apartment of the prostitute Nur, Said's accomplice in petty crime--fail to shelter him from his self-created tragedy. Every act at salvaging his self-respect only uncovers another source of despair: "I, the murderer, understand nothing.... I've tried to solve part of riddle, but have only succeeded in unearthing an even greater one."

The style of the novel alternates between traditional crime narrative and a stream-of-conscious tour of Said's mind. It's masterfully done (and it's a notably easy read), but the techniques and themes will be familiar to readers of the genre in the Western tradition. The novelty here, as translator Trevor Le Gassick notes, is the "intimate and authentic impressions of the values and structures of Egyptian society of the period." Although it may not seem as weighty as some of Mahfouz's better-known masterpieces, "The Thief" still manages to be powerful in its concision.

In the Thief and the dogs, Mahfouz casts a new light on the human experience! He talks of man's ongoing struggle to achieve what his heart wishes despite society's obstacles. Set in 1945 ,Egypt, it is the story of a man who is driven by society to become a thief--an unjust society that denies him redemption when his dark heart is finally lit by love!

After "The Beginning and the End" Mahfouz presented his trilogy, one of the best novels of the 20th century Egypt. Then he started writing this strange novel. It is nothing like any of his old novels. It is, in fact, the beginning of a new direction in his writing.

There were many directions in Mahfouz's writing. He started first with short stories, then moved to historical novels, and then settled with usual romances. And here, in the beginning of this new direction, he starts writing pointless stories. I do not mean in the bad sence, what I really mean is a story beginning in a certain setting, with rich characters, but with the strangest ending. It might not be the worst of his writing but I just do not like open or not consistent endings. And by no means, does that mean that the novel is bad

I, as a matter of fact, liked it. I even enjoyed, it is the style that I could not comprehend completely. 3 stars with Mahfouz mean 5 stars with other. When I give it 3 stars I mean it was very good, but I cannot give it 5 stars because in this case I would say it was as good as "The Trilogy," which is not the case.

In this story we see a prisoner getting out of jail full of revenge ideas. His wife betrays him, his daughter no longer recognizes him, and he has only three refuges are: a corrupted friend of his who is working as a journalist, a religious old man his father used to visit frequently, and a wretched girl he used to know before his imprisonment.

Then Mahfouz continues developing this character, with all the feelings and mishaps.

The story was, I cannot emphasize enough, interesting and enlightening, yet not my type. You might want to give it a try, but I recommend "The Trilogy" for starters.