Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz


Well, this is the first book I've read of this guy's - quite a prolific (Nobel Prize for Literature winning) author who started writing back in 1928. This one came out in the original Arabic in '57 and was only translated 10 years ago.

To be honest I actually started reading this book to avoid another book I was a few chapters into that started to annoy me.

So far it's a look at a big Egyptian family with all its tangled history, hopes and heartache. Funny though. Not cheap laughs funny, but wry, generous. There is the aging patriach, the doting matriach who has had her edge worn by the heartache of her daughters, the bespectacled son still living at home who teaches by day and immerses himself in classical philosophy and revolutionary politics by night, the various sister in laws, servants, friends of the families; you get the picture.

It will be interesting to see whether the unfoldings of everyday life are the main point of the book or whether it becomes more political, whether the brother finally gets laid, whether I will have to remember the names of lots of political movements that will make my brain hurt and whether any of the gender politics will shit me.

So far it has been a lyrical, warm, ironic tone that I am enjoying. Reminds me of Dostoevsky a bit; featuring privileged, educated young men pondering their fates as intellectuals and moral beings in politically charged times, lots of dialogue and characters that you can almost smell.

If only I had a bath to read it in!

"For truth was a beloved as flirtatious, inaccessible, and coquettish as any human sweetheart. It stirred up doubts and jealousy, awakening a violent desire in people to posses it and to merge with it. Like a human lover, it seemed prone to whims, passions, and disguises. Frequently it appeared cunning, deceitful, harsh, and proud."