Book Reviews

Book Review: The Effendi (الأفندى) by Mohamed Nagui: On the surface, Mohamed Nagui's The Effendi looks like another one of those anger-laden books about the corruption eating contemporary Egypt from the inside out. But delve deeper into this wonderfully realized piece of literature, and you discover that this novel offers much more than that. Nagui uses the by now cliched template of the Egyptian young man who snakes his way up using unethical short-cuts and sleight-of-hand, and turns it over its head by writing something closer to a modern fairytale.

The story revolves around Habib-Allah a.k.a The Effendi, an Egyptian young man from a poor family, who after the death of his mother, and realizing that his aging father will not be able to save Habib from a life of poverty, decides to grab any opportunity that comes his way, no matter how shady it is. He starts to deal in US dollars in the Black Market, with the help of a young woman called Nazek, a pathological liar (who believes her mother was a "blessed woman" who spent all her life fighting a person she refers to as "The Fallen", a mythical creature akin to The Devil), and whom, as life goes on, becomes Habib's mistress. From then on, Habib-Allah begins to rise and rise, doing everything from event-organizing for a rich, spoiled young woman from The Gulf, to making deals with embezzlers to buy cheap land and sell it for tons of money, to, finally, becoming a producer of motion pictures, with the help of a pretentious, elitist wanna-be writer called Fayez.

Although Nagui's prose ranges from sublime to serviceable, his storytelling is hypnotic. His characters - many of which are pretty off-kilter - are vividly drawn, and his plotting is good. But it is his grasp of atmosphere and the strangely beautiful mythical interludes about "The Fallen", that make this novel a rich, singular piece of work.

Rich with symbolism and layered with ideas, this thought-provoking, dark novel about hypocrisy, regret, selling your soul for financial gain and social esteem, and people who spend their lives chasing phantoms, deserves to be savored.

* Available from Dar Al-Hilal.

Book Review: The Palm House (بيت النخيل) by Tarek Eltayeb: I previously reviewed Tarek Eltayeb's first novel, Cities Without Palms, and found it to be a stylish if cliched piece of work. It was the work of a novice storyteller who despite his surprising mastery of sheer storytelling momentum, didn't have a lot to say, and whose plotting was average at best.

Not here, though. With The Palm House, which, according to the author, took seven years to complete, Eltayeb proves himself to be one of the most talented storytellers to come out of Egypt and the Arab world.

The novel, which is a sequel to Cities Without Palms, follows Hamza (the protagonist of Cities Without Palms) as he struggles to survive in Vienna, his latest home. Working as a newspaper vendor, and with only a cat as a housemate, Hamza's life is dull, oppressive, and lonely. But all that changes when he meets Sandra, a young Viennese woman who, after knowing that he used to live in a village filled with palm trees, reveals to him that there is a museum in Vienna called The Palm House, which features nothing but real palms. Together, Hamza and Sandra visit The Palm House and, slowly, begin to fall in love. As their love deepens, Sandra asks Hamza to share his life-story with her. And so Hamza, over the course of three years, tells her his story: His life as a young boy living in a secluded Sudanese village, the death of his family, his pilgrimage to Cairo, his travels around the world, and, finally, his landing in Vienna, looking for sanctuary and a new beginning.

First, let's get this out of the way: This is a melodrama. It is a story filled with tribulations, tragedies, adventures, and triumphs of the human spirit, many of which are far-fetched and held together by coincidence. In the hands of a lesser storyteller, this novel would have been boring and implausible. But Eltayeb isn't such a storyteller. He is a hugely talented writer, whose smooth prose, his obvious love of telling tales (including tall ones), his seamless plotting, and his ability to draw realistic, memorable characters, make this one enjoyable journey. And a journey it is! This novel is filled with quests, travels, confrontations, love-affairs, eccentrics, romantics, and tales within tales, which makes it just a tad too long. But Eltayeb's unique style makes it an effortless read that never lags, and never becomes anything but a joy to go through.

It is a testament to Eltayeb's skills as a writer, that even the cliched ending packs an emotional punch and has a strong bitter-sweet feel to it.

This is a marvelous novel about being a stranger in a strange land, and about lonely people trying to find comfort in each other. But, above all, this is a novel about storytelling, its magic, and its power to heal. Unmissable.

* Available from Al-Hadara Publishing.

Book Review

Book Review: Next To A Man I Know (بجوار رجل أعرفه) by Mohamed Fathy: The winner of the 2009 Sawares Award for Best Short Story Collection, Next To A Man I Know by Mohamed Fathy, is one of the most surprising collections of Egyptian short fiction I've come across in a long while, mainly because of author Fathy's unique style of prose and his mastery of storytelling.

This isn't yet another collection of stories by an angry, young Egyptian writer out to scream and yell and protest. That's not to say that Fathy's stories don't touch upon hot-button topics like the rise of the Religious right in Egypt, unemployment, and repressed sexuality. Fathy's stories are sure to rouse some controversy; maybe even a lot of controversy. But Fathy, unlike many of his contemporaries, doesn't take the the easy way out. His stories are, first and foremost, polished, at times meticulously realised, pieces of storytelling, that almost always succeed at being hard-hitting and entertaining. Highlights include the title story, a shocking tale of child abuse, a topic that's rarely touched upon in Egyptian fiction, Playing with Beshoy, a touching portrayal of friendship, with a disturbing final revelation, the darkly humorous A Taxi and a Sacred Ride, a story about a man who rides a taxi with what he thinks is a prostitute, only to get much more than he bargained for, All that's left, a melancholy psychological drama about a regretful young man who works as a mascot at a children's amusement park, and who laments his lost love, and The Window, a story about masturbation and sexual repression.

This is an unmissable collection of stories by an Egyptian writer who is both daring and subtle, and who (with a few exceptions, like in Whiteness and Hussein Whom . . .) almost never relies on histrionics to get his ideas across. And he manages to achieve something that many Egyptian writers seem unable to: Tell a damn good story.

Book Review

Book Review: My Journey: The Private Memoirs of Mohamed Abdel Wahab (رحلتى: الأوراق الخاصة جدا) edited by Farouk Goweida: Egyptian composer Mohamed Abdel Wahab has always been a controversial and enigmatic figure. He has been described as an obsessive-compulsive, hypochondriac perfectionist, as well as a radical (and sometimes even a "criminal"), mainly because of his penchant for "westernizing" Arabic music. He was the first Arabic composer to incorporate "Western" String instruments into his arrangements, and he was the first to introduce Rock'n'Roll rhythms into Arabic compositions. His detractors loathed him, and his fans (all around the world) adored him. To this day, he is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century, for bringing Classical Arabic Music to the attention of the world, and because of his internationalist views.

My Journey: The Private Memoirs, gives Art Buffs, musicologists, Abdel Wahab's fans, and even his detractors a chance to know his "true" opinions, and, most importantly, to really get to know the man behind some of the most important musical achievements of the past century.

Abdel Wahab, in his own words, comes off as a complicated, obsessive man, whose only true love in life was his music, which, throughout the book, he calls his "mistress." He comes off as an intelligent, progressive thinker (for the most part, anyway), whose opinions - which, for the most part, he kept to himself - range from logical to shocking. His opinion of women, for example, is sure to ruffle the feathers of feminists, and his political leanings are sure to surprise many (he calls Nasser a deceitful liar who duped the Egyptian public). But, again and again, his love and respect for his art form is the thing that truly shines through. And his undying desire to modernize Arabic music and to merge it with the European principles of "harmony" and "melody," show him to be a true genius, whose passion for music is genuine and contagious. Some of his comments, especially the ones he wrote in his final years, have proven to be prophetic, as he describes the art scene in Egypt as chaotic, fueled by the need to make money not art. He also scolds both the Egyptian Government and the Egyptian public for letting the country's artistic product decline in quality, as he calls the relationship between the audience and the artist a "symbiotic" one: one can't survive without the other.

Although many of Abdel Wahab's comments and opinions are sure to ruffle some feathers, this is a fascinating read which gives readers a rare glimpse inside the mind of one of Egypt's most important artists and, arguably, its most important musician. A must read.

Beware The Stranger: Yes, it's a novel about vampires!

It seems that my plan, to keep the nature of my novel's villain a secret, has been foiled. The novel, Beware The Stranger, has been out since last Christmas, so I guess it was inevitable. The novel's official synopsis, which is available at the novel's website and which has been printed in several Egyptian magazines and newspapers, reads as follows:

"The novel revolves around the adventures of Ahmed and Amr (both 11 Years-Old), two best friends who love horror movies, love hanging out at the mall, but only like school. But their normal lives are turned upside down when one of them receives a warning from an old beggar, a man called Am Abdo, telling him that there is a killer loose on the streets of Cairo, and whom is out to get them. A killer who might not be human, but a monster who comes out at night, looking for blood!"

Yes. I know that the mention of a monster out looking for blood sort of gives a big clue. But, you see, I didn't want it known that the main villain of the novel is a vampire. Why? Because of a couple of things, really.

For one thing, the vampire fiction of late has been mostly awful, especially vampire fiction for Young Adults. You have manipulative, unimaginative dreck like the Twilight series, and numerous stories about teens turning into vampires and becoming tortured superheroes. To me, that's not the way vampires should be depicted. Vampire stories that I loved reading while growing up, the ones that stand the test of time - like Bram Stoker's Dracula, in which the grand daddy of all vampires is depicted as a monstrous, merciless creature of the night, whose nature is sadistic and who lacks any redeeming qualities - retain an ageless ability to haunt readers' nightmares decades, sometimes even centuries, after the novel is first published, mainly because of how memorably frightening the vampires/monsters in these stories are. Although I did like some of Anne Rice's novels about the anti-hero vampire Lestat, I could only bear them in small doses, and to me, they were never really frightening (well, maybe the first novel in the saga, Interview With The Vampire, was somewhat scary and disturbing).

The vampire in my book, Nina, is a monster. She abducts women and children, and traps them to feed on their blood. She is conniving, ruthless and, beneath her guise as a woman, looks like something out of a really bad nightmare. She scared the hell out of me when I was writing the book, and, hopefully, she scared readers as well.

During my book-signing tour (Beware! The Tour), I never mentioned that Beware The Stranger was, to some extent, a vampire novel; mainly because I think it is much more than that. It is more of a dark fantasy novel than a vampire novel, but, according to readers' emails, it is scary, even too scary for some children.

After getting emails from readers telling me that the novel is, according to them, a scary, vampire/horror novel, and that that should be made clear to readers, especially since the novel is marketed toward Young Adults, I decided to do just that by writing this piece.

So, I declare that Beware The Stranger is a vampire novel. There. It's done.

So, if you are between the ages of 10 and a 110, and you would like to read a story about vampires that are scary, monstrous and might give you nightmares, instead of reading about heart-throb vampires who are torn between loving helpless maidens or drinking their blood, read Beware The Stranger, you might like it.

- Beware The Stranger is available to buy in Egypt from these stores. For readers outside Egypt, it is available to buy from from Amazon Kindle, or from the publisher.

Book Reviews

Book Review: The Search (الطريق) by Naguib Mahfouz: Reviewing any piece of work by Naguib Mahfouz is a risky proposition. His work is both loved and over-analyzed; both cherished and reviled (yes, to this day, there are some people, especially Uber-Conservative Egyptians, who consider his work to be "immoral," due to Mahfouz's unflinching eye when it comes to describing some of the seedier aspects of Egyptian life). I have already attempted to review one of my favorite books of his, Midaq Alley (زقاق المدق). And I am going to try once more, with another of my favorites, The Search (الطريق).

The Search is, far and away, Mahfouz's most noirish work. The story of Saber, the son of a prostitute, who is forced, after his mother's death, to search for his absentee father, whom his mother claims is an "Egyptian gentleman" who will able to save him from an ugly life of pimping and petty-crime, is chock-full of all the main ingredients of livre-noir: The troubled anti-hero with a sordid past, the search for something elusive that promises salvation, the femme-fatale, and the overpowering sense of doom. Although Naguib Mahfouz's tales almost always have a norish bent, The Search is, arguably, his most obvious attempt at writing a piece of vintage noir. The sharp, hard-hitting dialogue, the descriptions of Cairo by night, the extremely complex character of Saber, who, throughout the tale, struggles with his own demons and penchant for violence and crime, the fast-pace, the downbeat, borderline nihilistic ending, all combine to make this a masterpiece of crime fiction, similar to the best works of James M. Cain.

A somewhat lesser-known part of his oeuvre, The Search is a fascinating novel that showcases Mahfouz at his most stylistically daring, and is a must for fans of livre-noir.

Book Review: Cities Without Palms (مدن بلا نخيل) by Tarek Eltayeb: Cities Without Palms by Tarek Eltayeb is an example of style over substance. The story (about a young Sudanese man who leaves his drought-stricken village and embarks on a journey to find money to support his family) is cliched, the plotting just about average, and the characters, although memorable, are not meticulously drawn. But its stylishness saves it. Author Eltayeb's style of prose and his superb command of pacing, turns this simple, ordinary tale into a compelling, fast-paced novella that is hard to put down once you start reading it. Also, Eltayaeb's masterful grasp of atmosphere and his ability to vividly describe a place with just a few well-chosen words, is in itself a marvel. And like all good writers, he makes it look easy, when really it isn't.

I for one can't wait to delve deeper into this writer's body of work (this is his first novel, originally published in 1992), which consists of several novels and short story collections, one of which is House Of Palms (بيت النخيل), a sequel to this novel. On its own, Cities Without Palms is a quick, enjoyable read, that promises great things to come.

Book Review

Book Review: A Matter of Time (مسألة وقت) by Montasser El Qafash: The winner of the 2009 Sawares Award for Best Work of Literature, A Matter of Time is a novel that is hard to review. It has an intriguing premise: a young man, who works as a part-time tutor to university students, has a one-night stand with one of his students, only to discover a little while later that she had died three hours before coming to his apartment and sleeping with him. Baffled, the young man, who feels he is just coasting through life, starts an investigation into the young woman's past, which leads him to a friend of hers, a young woman named Nahed, who claims to have also been visited by the young woman's apparition.

Author Montasser El Qafash uses this central plot-line more or less as a McGuffin to delve deeper into his characters' lives and psyches. And herein lies the problem. His characters are pretty aimless, which I understand is intentional, since the whole novella seems to be a study of what happens to regular people, leading ordinary, mundane lives, when they are confronted by something that challenges their sense of reality. But aimless characters leading aimless lives don't make for a very gripping read. Which is not to say that this novel is bad. Far from it. It's atmospheric, stylishly written, and has a fascinating premise. But one can't help but feel that it would have made a great short story. As a novel, even a short one, it seems overlong and, ultimately, underwhelming.

Book Review

Book Review: Solo Piano Music (عزف منفرد على البيانو) by Fawaz Haddad: This masterful psychological thriller is like no other Arabic book I've ever come across. It combines aspects of the spy genre, the Jamesian Psychological drama, with thought-provoking existentialism, to produce a fine, ambitious thriller.

The plot - revolving around a secular Syrian writer and government official who, after getting attacked and beaten by a mysterious figure and becoming a sort of a celebrity, is entangled in a complex plot involving negotiations between the Syrian Government and Extremist Islamists - is layered, and at times dizzyingly complex. But author Fawaz Haddad's grasp of his characters, especially the protagonist, Fateh, that makes the reader want to tag along for this long and complicated journey. And a journey it is. Featuring a myriad of complex characters, shadowy goings-on, flashbacks and political intrigue, this isn't the easiest of reads. But Haddad's smooth prose, meticulous plotting, a fascinating supporting character (Selim, the enigmatic counter-terrorism agent), and a hell of a twist ending, all combine to make this a thriller worth spending some time and energy with. Highly Recommended.