New York : Anchor Books, 2008, c1984
158 p. ; 21 cm.
Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1988, and this little gem of a novel gives an example of why.
It is the tale of a man emerging from four years of harsh and humiliating imprisonment, only to find that his wife and her new lover are the ones who betrayed him to the police, and that his criminal mentor is a hypocrite and a man of means and power. Bent on revenge, Said Mahran ends up destroying the only treasure he has left, his humanity.
In it's short, but intense meditation on the human spirit, this novel reminds me of another Nobel laureates fine little novel, Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea.
I really appreciated this novel of set in 1950s Egypt. It is straightforward, compelling, and easy to finish, but leaves you with a lot to sit back and think about.
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