Customer Reviews

Zayni Barakat

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Zayni Barakat is a historical novel set in Mamluk Egypt. Having lived in Egypt (where I read the novel 11 years ago) and studied Egyptian history, I can say that the work more than accomplishes the primary job of historical fiction--it transports the reader to another time and place, making that time and that place come alive.

However, Zayni Barakat is, like much of Naguib Mahfouz's later work, a pointed commentary on modern Egyptian politics. In particular, it is the story of police surveillance and what it means to live -- and work for -- a police state. Al-Ghitani captures the dis-ease and perversity of the Nasserist police state admirably. The novel thus deserves to be read both as a diversion and as an education in contemporary Arab politics.

This book is a written the context of the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt. However many of the attitudes, methods and ideas presented in the book can be found in today's Middle East. The author has an excellent command on the istory of the region and also on the attitudes feelings and emotions of the period he is desciribing through a narrarative account. The book is fiction but it feels too real to be that