RESPECTED SIR
Naguib Mahfouz
New York: Doubleday, 1990
200 pp., $7.95 (paper)
AUTUMN QUAIL
Naguib Mahfouz
New York: Doubleday, 1990
167 pp., $7.95 (paper)
THE BEGGAR
Naguib Mahfouz
New York: Doubleday, 1990
140 pp., $7.95 (paper)
These three novels introduce the reader to distinctively different strain in the art of 1988 Nobel Prize laureate, Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz. Each, however, exemplifies many of the attitudes and concerns that are common to all his work. In each case they center upon the false values and poor moral character of middle-aged male protagonists who are undergoing a trauma of self-recognition brought on by societal circumstances beyond their control.
Revolution and alienation
Autumn Quail opens in Cairo amid the fire and confusion of January 1952 when the city is being put to the torch by xenophobic and antiroyalist mobs. The loss of Egyptian life and dignity in battles between Egyptian police and the British forces, who are resisting pressures to abandon their bases in the Suez Canal Zone, have left them enraged. The fires are followed six months later by the coupde'etat of the Free Officers association under Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose revolutionary regime soon purges everyone who had enjoyed power and influence under the ancien regime.
The novel then follows the next five years in the life of Isa, once a rising star in the Wafd Party. Disgraced and then dismissed from his high civil service position by a tribunal that finds him guilty of bribe-taking and favoritism - endemic behavior in Egypt both before the revolution and in recent years - the protagonist lacks motivation or the possibility of reintegration into the new society.
His life is drab and dissolute. His engagement having been broken, he exploits a young prostitute whom he impregnates and abandons, and has no love for the wealthy divorcee he marries with total cynicism. His depression is made all the more acute by his inability to express his patriotism through service to his country in its bitter struggle with Israel, Britain, and France. Finally, however, Isa meets by chance an influential young leader of the revolution who seems to be suggesting that some reconciliation with the regime might be possible for him.
The major theme in the novel, then, is the alienation of the central character, and by extension his entire social class, from the contemporary society. The characterization of this man is typically Mahfouzian. Isa is a fundamentally flawed individual, one whose life has been centered solely on himself and his desire for advancement. While those around him also generally behave without scruple or conscience, he himself is totally amoral and devoid of the capacity for
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