Palace Walk is het eerste van de drie delen van de Cairo Trilogie. Deze familie roman in de traditie van Thomas Mann speelt in het begin van de 20e eeuw en gaat over het wel en wee van een gezin dat in Cairo leeft.Het boek leest het makkelijk, en geeft inzicht in het leven van een moslim gezin uit die tijd. Naast de verwondering over het super paternalistische cultuur, blijken alle familie leden van vlees en bloed. De volwassen mannen kunne echter doen en laten wat ze willen; voor de getrouwde vrouwen is er weinig tot geen ruimte dan het leven in huis onder het gezag van hun echtgenoot.

Palace of Desire en Sugar Street heb ik niet meer gelezen. De ruim 500 pagina's van Palace Walk waren wel genoeg. ( )

The first book, Palace Walk, I reviewed alone. The next two books in the trilogy, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street, aren't as good as the first book, imo. Palace of Desire covers the time frame when Kamal and the rest of his siblings are grown up, in their 20s. It's dominated by Kamal's lengthy inner conversations, mostly concerning his love for a girl named Aïsha, the sister of his classmate, who is extremely vain and conceited, and enjoys using Kamal to make a rich boy marry her quickly. Kamal suffers deeply from this, and the endless monologues with himself are tiring to Wade through. The father is his usual puto self, as in the first book, getting drunk every night and partying with sex workers, though he's now in his 50s.

Sugar Street is the last book of the trilogy, and covers the time when Kamal's siblings' children have become young adults. It's Also rather tiresome, as there are still lengthy monologues from Kamal talking to himself, and his nephews by his sister Khadija are also fond of lengthy inner conversations. Khadija has grown enormous, but her long-suffering mother Amina is withering away from a long life of being dominated under her "master" (her husband), who is finally suffering the ill effects of a lifetime of nightly partying. He's got crippling high blood pressure, and blocked arteries that are forcing his heart to work overtime. Quite satisfying to read of the downfall of this disgusting macho character. The writing is telling of Mahfouz's personality, and I suppose a part of it is infected by the times (early twentieth century through WWII). It's fascinating for its exploration of Egyptian culture. ( )

Here's what I wrote in 2008 about reading these works: "Wonderful books, with rich insights into Egyptian Muslim society. He (Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, the main character of Palace Walk and trilogy patriach) seemed a bit of a heavy-handed, selfish brute to MGA, but acknowledge the wide difference between our cultures. Memories of his wife, Amina, lovnig nothing more than being surrounded by her family at mealtimes, still linger. Read May - Aug, 2000. Should re-read some day." ( )

Multi-generational story set in the early 1900's. Drama is quite soap opera esque, both character and historically driven. I think Tolstoy is a fair comparison for those aspects, lots of character hopping, very high emotions.

Obviously for it's setting and time period some of the characters can be quite uncomfortable to read. They are quiet on the extreme ends of their beliefs and social practices even for the time. I believe it is done to heighten the generational divides, and bring attention too how some of the events in the book effect the characters. There is rape and abuse shown from their perspectives, as well as the perspectives of other characters. The books certanly glorifies aspects of all this, not to say it isn't its own source of drama, or that is always shown positively. Still something to beware of if these are difficult subjects to read for you.

Also it's best to go in with some knowledge of the historical events the book is based around, or at least do some reading on the side. The family drama is far more in the forefront, so it often more references these things as they exist in the background of these characters lives, until something personally significant happens. ( )

Egypt as it was in all its bizarre wonder...[in progress]