Full of Machiavellian intrigue and searing political satire, Variations on Night and Day, the final volume of Munif's landmark Cities of Salt trilogy, chronicles the creation of a Persian Gulf nation by a corrupt Arab monarch and conniving British empire builders.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Jordanian-born attorney Munif, former editor of the Baghdad-based monthly Oil and Development , brings his epic Cities of Salt trilogy full circle in its closing volume. Cities of Salt and The Trench , set in the Sultanate of Mooran (a thinly disguised version of Saudi Arabia) from the mid-1930s to the late 1950s, traced the effects of the discovery of oil by American and British groups. Variations covers the prelude to that period in the early decades of this century, showing how the Sultan Khureybit consolidated his power and created Mooran as a modern nation-state. By moving his chronology backwards, Munif instills the action with multiple levels of irony. His detailed picture of life in the palace, where the sultan's many wives vie for primacy, makes a vivid contrast with the common people's simple piety in Cities of Salt ; he also reveals the roots of the rivalry between two of Khureybit's sons, profligate Khazael and quietly intelligent Fanar, who will later fight for the sultanate. One of the most vividly realized protagonists is the British adventurer Hamilton, a fascinating combination of T. E. Lawrence and what might be a character out of Edward Said's Orientalism . The densely aphoristic prose and folkloric tone are for the third time superbly translated by Theroux. Munif is one of the most important writers to emerge from the Middle East in the last 20 years, and Variations on Night and Day triumphantly concludes his three-volume rumination on the poignancy of inevitable change, the sadness of those overwhelmed by the tides of history and the effect of those tides on the men and women who are carried by them.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
The final installment of Munif's Cities of Salt trilogy, first published in 1989, offers still another view of the same historical subject: the corruption of traditional Arab values when Western allegiances substitute power and money for family and tribal loyalties. Munif's hero this time is Sultan Khureybit of Mooran, whose 1930's friendship with the British surveyor Hamilton makes him the natural instrument of London's notion that a single strong sheikh in the area will be easier to deal with than the usual endless wrangle. Accordingly, Khureybit looks beyond the normal means of consolidating his power--alliances with other chieftains and wholesale marriages with their daughters--and begins to attack his neighbors with quiet backing from abroad. With the flight of Ibn Madi, sultan of Awali, Khureybit's dominion seems secure. But his alliances force him closer to friends worse than his enemies--from the ferocious chieftain Ibn Mayyah, who refuses to take prisoners during the siege of Awali, to his latest wife Najma, whose entrance into his harem sets off a firestorm of backbiting and violence. Tale's end finds Khureybit still riding high--backed by the British crown and seconded by Hamilton, now called Abdelsamad on his conversion to Islam--but he's become a paper tiger, an absurd figure whose power struggles with his old allies even within his family--fights he can't possibly lose, though they strip him of everything he once loved--grow increasingly farcical. Munif is no Euro-basher, as his sympathetic, incisive portrait of Hamilton, the most compelling of his characters, shows. All the more impressive, then, is his satirical review of a calamitous series of cultural exchanges that leaves his Arab potentate bloated with borrowed power and utterly without grace or dignity. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lyrical but Anguished,
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This review is from: Variations on Night and Day (Paperback)
Abdelrahman Munif's novels are brilliantly written and, in my opinion, offer the same satisfactions as the novels of Gogol and Dostoyevsky; in this particular novel, the tone is much more lyrical and wistful, and the characters behave with more heroic motives, than in "Cities of Salt" (tragic) or "The Trench" (satirical). This describes the series of struggles for control of the soon-to-be Sultanate of Mooran, both within the [Saudi-modelled] royal house, and among rival clans.
Set in the 1920's, when the fate of the Arabian Peninsula was uncertain, and the role of the British Foreign & Colonial Office was potentially decisive, this novel pays special attention to the relationship between Khureybit and Hamilton. Hamiton, incidentally, is based on Harry St. John Bridger Philby (or Jack Philby, father of Kim Philby; Wikipedia has an excellent write-up on him). The tension between Hamilton's concerns about the growing corruption in the Mooran ruling house, and his loyalty to Khureybit, are sensitively and carefully portrayed.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mooran more - last of a trilogy,
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This review is from: Variations on Night and Day (Hardcover)
Mr. Maclean's excellent review gives you the historical perspective and Amazon's description gives you the story details of Munif's final book in his Cities of Salt trilogy.
While I didn't enjoy this quite as much as the first two, it was still an enthralling read - if for no other reason than Munif's ability to write and Theroux's ability to translate. The trilogy provides an in depth story of a way of life that we can hardly fathom. The time span covered is not that long ago, but impossible to recapture except for dry textbooks or (much better) books by someone like Munif. I'm not sure there is another Munif, and if there is I'm don't know how a better job could be done. Read this for enjoyment. But make sure your mind is fully engaged so you can achieve some understanding of a place and time which is the basis for so much of our current world.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A haunting look at the human relations behind the scenes of nation building,
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This review is from: Variations on Night and Day (Paperback)
This novel is set in the 1920s and `30s--before the introduction of the automobile--in an Arab and Muslim nation called Mooran, which could very well be the early Saudi Arabia. The description of the novel on the back cover gives us only a sketch: the novel _Variations on Night and Day_ "chronicles the creation of a Persian Gulf nation by a corrupt Arab monarch and conniving British empire builders." Of course, it's more complex. The human relations involved are tricky to map because the British character, Hamilton, is essentially well-intentioned, even idealistic--in contrast to the two other British agents of empire--and Khureybit is a clever, even wise, local ruler. The tension arises--as the reader might expect--when the British decide to expand their "national interests" and aren't sure if they should give the money and guns to Khureybit or to one of his two Arab/Muslim neighbors. Just at this time, Khureybit decides he wants to go from being an emir to becoming Sultan by expanding his domains; when he shows his strength in small battles, he earns British attention and the money and guns to take over the two neighboring nations (one of which, Awali, is actually culturally superior to Mooran).
The key factors in the British ability to expand their colonial outposts are that they hire intellectually bright men. Yes, the empire builders are talented, ambitious, and know how to ratchet up the tension with a few words, or how to vacate the scene and be gone long enough to be missed by the Sultan. While Hamilton becomes indispensable, Khureybit has complex advisors--Abu Mishael and Ibn Bakhit--and two intelligent and complex sons--Khazael and Fanar. The key factors which Khureybit must manage if he is to succeed at this grand game are the Muslim fundamentalists who--you guessed it--claim that Khureybit is too close to the British infidels. Fanar is the son chosen to learn English and visit London with Hamilton. Miss Margot, Hamilton's aunt, is well-educated, literate, and culturally savvy about imperial strategies; her presence in the novel shows the stark contrast between European women and the Arab women who have no such freedoms but must burn-out their intelligence in palace intrigues. Originally published in Arabic in 1989, _Variations on Night and Day_ is the third book in Munif's triology, which includes _Cities of Salt_, and _The Trench_. Clearly this novel is the prehistory of our 21st-century international relations. In one of the final scenes, after Sultan Khureybit has militarily controlled his neighboring nations, and seemingly garnered the patronage of the British empire, he and his Arab advisors know such victories are only temporary. The British advisors announce that they think there is oil under the sand and are sending a crew to investigate. Well, that is to be expected, but to read this novel is to be able to write your notes in the margins of the book at exactly the places where someone says something that tips the balance of power one way or another.
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