|
|
This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.
Enter Naguib Mahfouz. I first started reading the fiction of Mahfouz a couple decades ago, and I was enthralled from the start by his Dickensian depictions of historic and contemporary Egypt. I was literally transported to the cultures depicted in his fiction: I inhabited Midaq Alley, sauntered by the Mediterranean Sea in Alexandria, lived through the wrenching heartaches of the revolution in Autumn Quail, and journeyed with friends on a night ride on the Pyramids Road. Mahfouz’s ability to capture Cairene and Egyptian life was, in my estimation, paralleled only by a handful of select masters—Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pasternak, Woolf, Hardy, Dickens, and Hawthorne. His novels breathed life, his settings came alive, his psychological portraits were subtle and profound, almost Shakespearean in their depth and complexity, and his ability to transport the reader to a particular era was unrivaled.
As my interest in Mahfouz’s art grew, I became increasingly aware of—and surprised at—how little was known about this master writer here in the West, even after he had won the Nobel Prize in 1988. Somehow his voluminous canon was too often ignored and not translated into English. In time, things slowly changed and his name did elicit at least some response, but for me an anomaly developed: people were reading him, but scholars were not writing about him.
Enter Pamela Allegretto-DiIulio. In addition to her fine writing skills, good readings of the text, creative interpretations, and enthusiasm for literature, she was also an excellent scholar to undertake such a work because of her in-depth experience with the Middle East. She had lived and taught there for many years, and visited many of the countries. She knew the culture, especially Kuwait, inside and out, loved and interacted with the people daily, and read prolifically about its history and the Islamic religion.
This book brings all these elements together, and she has indeed produced a very fine study which probes the subtleties of Mahfouz’s fiction, and makes it very obvious that Mahfouz stands by himself: he is a brilliant artist. Her particular slant—his depictions of female entrapment—is boldly chosen and makes him even more relevant.