Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #472662 in Books
• Published on: 1994-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Customer Reviews

Adrift on a river of troubles
Winning the Nobel Prize for literature (in 1988) certainly didn't hurt him any, and
now Naguib Mahfouz has become a house-hold name (for the literati, at least). When
one reads a Prize-winner, one expects substance and style, and Mahfouz, if his
translators are honest, certainly seems worthy of the Swedish honor. In "Adrift on the
Nile," nihilism is the word, as a group of like minded intellectuals gather nightly on a
houseboat moored on the famous river where they question anything that can be
questioned--"but no answers," they claim. "There are never any answers," as they call
into account any topic brought up. It is a "din in iniquity," for sure, as good Egyptian
kif (and a well-stoked pipe) help to bring out their curiousity cum intellect. That is,
until, toward the end of this short novel, the group takes a ride out into the desert
where a disaster happens. It's Jay Gatsby, final chapter, of course.
Mahfouz is compared to Proust, Camus, Salinger, and an introspective Hemingway,
and justifiably so. Hailed as the "widest-read Arab writer currently published in the
U.S.," Mahfouz has certainly wielded his own influence among international readers
since the '88 Prize; alas, it seems it took the impact of this award for his books to
achieve their circulation, but that doesn't diminish his themes, his philosophies, his
impact on both socially significant issues and modern literature.
"Adrift on the Nile" reads fast and it is short; yet it packs a punch that seems to score
to the very soul. The houseboat literally becomes a ship of fools, adrift on the
Sargasso Sea, headed into the Bermuda triangle. Existentialists will love this one.
(Billyjhobbs@tyler.net)

An Egyptian 'Betrayal of the Scholars'
Intellectuals gather every evening on a boat for drug and sex parties. One of them writes a play with the members of the group as main characters. Their common attitude: flight for reality, nihilism and defeatism. The fervour after the Nasser revolution is gone: "Revolutions are planned by cunning foxes, fought by the brave and won by the cowards."
But ultimately they are confronted with reality when one of them kills a person in a car accident and flees. Will the name of the culprit be revealed to the police? The group falls apart.

Mahfouz punches Samuel Beckett and his 'theatre of the absurd' K.O. when he cleverly remarks that Beckett filed a complaint against an editor who failed to fulfil his contract. His plays may be absurd, but not the royalties. It was all just a pose.

Indeed, more a book for Egyptian readers, but also with a universal theme: don't shun your responsibilities.

Highly recommended.

A great translation of a great book
This is one of Mahfouz's finest works, portraying in miniature a whole world of intellectual futility and its collision with reality. One has to wonder whether it is not autobiographical, since Mahfouz lived in a houseboat on the Nile for several years after his marriage, and he collided with the reality of conservative Islam. Frances Liardet is to be complimented on that rare achievement - a translation that reads like an original. Even the English title is a brilliant touch - so much more evocative than the Arabic, which means literally 'chit-chat on the Nile'.