Product Description

This is a sweeping and evocative portrait of both a family and a country struggling to move toward independence in a society that has resisted change for centuries. Set against the backdrop of Britain's occupation of Egypt immediately after World War I, Palace Walk introduces us to the Al Jawad family. Ahmad, a middle-class shopkeeper runs his household strictly according to the Qur'an while at night he explores the pleasures of Cairo. A tyrant at home, Ahmad forces his gentle, oppressed wife and two daughters to live cloistered lives behind the house's latticed windows, while his three very different sons live in fear of his harsh will.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33031 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• Original language: Arabic
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

From the Back Cover
A sweeping and evocative portrait of both a family and a country struggling to move toward independence in a society that has resisted change for centuries. Set against the backdrop of Britain’s occupation of Egypt immediately after World War I, Palace Walk introduces us to the Al Jawad family.

Ahmad, a middle-class shopkeeper, runs his household strictly according to the Qur’an while at night he explores the pleasures of Cairo. A tyrant at home, Ahmad forces his gentle, oppressed wife and two daughters to live cloistered lives behind the house’s latticed windows, while his three very different sons live in fear of his harsh will.

‘Writing worthy of a Tolstoy, a Flaubert or a Proust’
Independent

‘Luminous…All the magic, mystery and suffering of Egypt in the 1920s are conveyed on a human scale."
New York Times Book Review

About the Author
Naguib Mahfouz was born in Cairo in 1911 and began writing when he was seventeen. A student of philosophy and an avid reader, he has been influenced by many Western writers, including Flaubert, Balzac, Zola, Camus, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and, above all, Proust. He has more than thirty novels to his credit, ranging from his earliest historical romances to his most recent experimental novels. In 1988, Mr Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lives in the Cairo suburb of Agouza with his wife and two daughters.

Customer Reviews

This is a superb novel with well developed characters.
Palace Walk is the first novel in Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo trilogy. The three books provide a window onto a culture far removed from that of to-day's Western liberalism. His trilogy starts in 1914 and ends in the min-1950s. For our guide to this world Mahfouz uses a bourgeois family living in central Cairo. Their members act as a vehicle for interpreting the effect of world events as they impact on traditional Egyptian society. To ensure that his message is understood Mahfouz makes his story easily digestible for European readers by using the format of a Victorian bourgeois family saga. The roots for this fascinating trilogy of books can be traced back to the high-Victorian novelists of Trollop and Collins. He gives this tradition a modern twist by including comment on the main political events of the time. Although his style is Victorian his theme is not. Mahfouz focuses on two generations of one family and demonstrates how Egypt changed from an introverted, autocratic, chauvinist society to a more liberal and liberated, outward looking culture.

As an Egyptian who lived through this period he shows it to us with a sharply focused eye that can portray the inevitability of the changes and both the positive and negative elements of what was lost. The central character, Al-Said Ahmad, combines a laughing, charming side that he exposes to his male friends and concubines and another of a bullying, inflexible autocrat which he shows to his family. He lives his life as a devout muslim and recognises no conflict between these two sides to his life. In the novel he personifies the old pre-war Egypt and his death at the end of the trilogy marks the end of this ancient culture. Palace Walk, the first book in the trilogy, defines traditional Egypt. Al-Said Ahmad is the great patriarch and Amina is his devoted wife, between them we have two powerful characters from whom the whole story hangs. Mafhouz skilfully controls a large number of characters. He is prepared to give each one a large section of the book. Their relationships, problems and thoughts are carefully and minutely conveyed through their own actions and concerns and through their interactions with their family and friends. Like any great Victorian novelist Mahfouz takes his time. He wants us to be part of the family, perhaps a distant cousin who hears the stories knows the characters but is not invited to comment. The landscape that Mahfouz creates for us is dominated by Al-Sayid whose dreadful hypocrisy leaps off the page from the first chapter. Amina, his wife, despite rising at 5am to cook the family breakfast, must break her sleep in the middle of the night to greet her dominating husband as he returns from his revels. She peers down the stair well with a mixture of love and fear as the light from his lamp slowly rises towards her. Each night is the same; she kneels before him and helps him undress. She waits to be dismissed to her own room whilst he hums the songs that he has been listening to and laughs at the memories of jokes and experiences that he denies to his wife because she is a woman.

With the commitment of a devout muslim he cares for the souls of his wife and daughters by keeping them confined to his house, uneducated in any activity not directly related to managing a home. He terrifies his whole family into submitting to his will in all areas of life. But this fear excludes him from any intimacy with them. They love and admire his will, religious faith and zest for life. It is only after he has left in the morning for his shop that family life begins and his three sons and two daughters can reveal their true selves, gossip about their neighbours and bicker with each other.

Their daily lives are predicated on their gender. The two girls stay at home and through their lives we see a lost world of domestic life. Many boring and arduous tasks must be completed each day. They fight and complain but with no real will to change their destiny. They exploit the power that their domestic position gives them when fighting with their brothers. The age range of the boys allows for detailed descriptions of the old Egyptian way of life outside the home. Kamal is the youngest son and still at school. Yasin, the eldest, is a young bachelor of independent means who is beginning a life of dissipation that mirrors that of his father.

Although carefully planned to demonstrate how life changed over the middle years of this century the novel is not contrived. Each member of the family has a fully rounded character which drives their actions. This is one of those rare books where fictional characters and real events create a coherent whole.

An Excellent Introduction to Egyptian Culture
Twelve years ago, I spent several months living in Egypt. I am an American woman, and at that time, I found much of the culture and behavior of Egyptians to be confusing. Since that time, I have married a Moroccan, and have lived in Morocco for the past ten years. I now feel that I understand much about Arab culture.

Just recently, a friend recommended I read the Cairo trilogy. I began with Palace Walk, and haven't yet read the others. This book is SUPERB. Westerners have trouble understanding how Middle Easterners THINK. This book is so wonderful because it takes you inside the mind of each of the characters, in turn, chapter-by-chapter, showing you how each one of them thinks, and allowing you to see their motivations for their behavior. One person commmented in their book review that the majority of the book concentrated on the male characters. There is a reason for this. Egyptian society is mostly about men, not about women. Even as the society modernizes, the THINKING stays the same. Mahfuz has done a masterful character study of each character in the book, as they go therough their daily lives. Without yet having read the two subsequent books, I expect that I will get more in depth into the women's lives in Sugar Street, because this is the house to which the two female daughters have moved upon their marriages to two brothers.

In the past, I have tried to read some other books by this author, and just couldn't get into them. These books are different. They really do merit the Nobel Prize. Reading them now, after being immersed in the Arab culture for 12 years, I see so many more things than I would have noticed had I read the books first. But living in this culture, I can see how accurate they are, and how the men really DO behave and think like the characters in these books! Aside from the all this, the story line is wonderful, too. I had trouble putting the book down after having read the first few pages. I recommend these books to anyone who would really like to understand the Middle Eastern culture.

An amazing trilogy
When I went to Egypt recently, every Egyptian I met, when I expressed an interest in Egyptian literature, told me to read the Cairo trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz. Once you've read the trilogy you'll realise why he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He tells a gripping story of a family's life in Cairo, interweaving the stories of each member of the family with the wider political events affecting Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century. It gives an insight into Egyptian life which as an outsider you could never otherwise hope to gain. The trilogy is timeless and easily the best three books I have read in the past year.