This is my first book for the 1961 Club, and as I usually do, I’ll start out by listing the other books I’ve already reviewed for 1961 before I launch into my review. They are
- The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
- Castle Dor by Daphne Du Maurier
- The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett
- Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
- A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer
- The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes
- The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
- The Château by William Maxwell
- The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
- The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart
Since I read Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, I was interested to see this novel in a list of books published in 1961. Boy, is it depressing.
Said Mahran has just been released from prison, vowing revenge. As a teenager working in a student hostel, he was influenced by Rauf Ilwan, a fiery revolutionary, to believe that there was no sin in robbing the rich—Rauf even picked out targets for him. But Said was caught and served four years. He believes his former follower, Ilish, betrayed him along with his wife, Nabawiyya, because she divorced him while he was in jail and married Ilish. He is so full of vengeance and self-justification that it’s difficult to know what actually happened.
The first thing he does is go to Ilish’s house to see Sana, his six-year-old daughter. Of course, she doesn’t remember him and is afraid of him, so thereafter he says his daughter disowned him. All his thought processes seem to work that way.
He is thwarted when Ilish, Nabawiyya, and Sana disappear, so he goes to see Rauf Ilwan. But while he was in jail, the Egyptian revolution occurred, and Rauf is now a successful and wealthy mainstream journalist, who patronizes him and tells him to get a job. Said decides to kill him.
This guy is a human train wreck. His poorly planned attacks go wrong, and innocent people are killed. But the values of some of the characters are so skewed that he becomes a sort of folk hero. Or so they tell him. The almost unrelenting fury of the main character is only somewhat balanced by the cryptic utterances of the Sufi Sheikh that Said’s father used to study with.
I really hated this character. The atmosphere of this book reminded me a lot of The Informer, which I read for last year’s 1925 Club.
What? Me Read? 