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the complete review - fiction

Palace Walk

by
Naguib Mahfouz

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

A- : powerful, if narrowly focussed family portrait

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "Much of the novel is devoted to the immemorial rhythms of family life behind the walls of the house on Palace Walk, the morning baking of bread, the coffee-hour conversations of the mother and her children, the teasing and bickering among the siblings, the yearnings each of them feels to escape a tyranny they are bound to by religious law but a tyranny that they also love and respect. (...) For leisurely page after leisurely page nothing much seems to happen, although these same pages are rich in psychological insight and cultural observation. (...) In his own language Mahfouz is celebrated for the classical elegance of his style; this English is alternately stodgy, clumsy and jarringly anachronistic." - Richard Dyer, Boston Globe
  
  
• "Without a framework that would compel the reader through the novel, Palace Walk is more like a well written forced march than a pleasure trip. Mahfouz seems fascinated by the details of his characters' lives, at the expense of all else." - Jake Morrissey, National Review
  
  
• "There are some perceptive observations about the psychology of patriarchy -- there is a wonderful scene, for example, in which the patriarch's son, a brave and ardent nationalist, finds himself reduced to a quaking heap by the tone of his father's voice. But the reader would be better able to savor those moments, perhaps, if Mahfouz's sympathy with the patriarch were not so patent, if the book were not so much pervaded by nostalgia for a time when Men were Men." - Amitav Ghosh, The New Republic
  
  
• "Palace Walk, first published in 1956, is the best of Mahfouz's work. He drew heavily on autobiography (like the character Kamal, he was the youngest son in a large merchant clan). He writes about family, and to understand the Egyptian family is to understand, more clearly than any political treatise can explain, the soul of the country." - Christopher Dickey, Newsweek
  
  
• "It is a great novel by any criterion. Not so unfortunately the present translation fails to capture the spirit of the Arabic text and does little justice to Mahfouz's style. What constitutes modern and spirited prose in Arabic has been rendered in a largely dated and stilted English register particularly so in the dialogue. Examples can be found on literally every page" - Rasheed El-Enany, Third World Quarterly

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Palace Walk is set in Cairo, and covers the time between 1917 and the Egyptian revolution of 1919. Most of the book, however, is set inside a single house, both a haven and an isolated island. The outside world is held at bay here -- more, and then less effectively -- and one of the major themes of the novel is the constant (and ultimately futile) struggle to have time stand still. Change presses inexorably against tradition, and even the walls of the house can not keep it outside . The great changes going on outside eventually intrude even here.
       Palace Walk is the story of the Jawad family, and Mahfouz begins his novel not with the dominant head of the household but with the mother, Amina -- the one who is always at home. She is entirely subservient to her husband ("My opinion is the same as yours, sir. I have no opinion of my own", she dutifully tells him), having reconciled herself "to a type of security based on surrender". Surrounded by her family -- two daughters, two sons, and a stepson -- she is content with her lot, despite the fact that her strict husband forbids her to go out alone, which means she spends almost her entire life entirely within the confines of the house.
       The father, al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, is a shopkeeper. A strict disciplinarian, his entire family respects him but also lives in considerable fear of him. His expectations are so high, and he so demanding, that a good deal is actually kept from him: white lies and evasiveness are the norm, meaning that he often isn't entirely aware of what is going on.
       Ostensibly a devout Muslim, he nevertheless enjoys revelling and carousing with his close friends, coming home drunk night after night, having enjoyed wine, women, and song. As a woman he is trying to seduce recognises: "On the outside you are dignified and pious, but inside you're licentious and debauched." From his own family he demands a much stricter adherence to Islam and tradition, and it is unthinkable, for example, that his wife or daughters might go out into the street without his permission or company, even if they are properly veiled. One of the major catastrophes in the book comes when Amina does allow herself to be convinced by her children to venture out and is hit by a car: al-Sayyid Ahmad sends her home to her mother in disgust at the dishonour she has brought upon him and his family by her actions.
       There are five children. The eldest son, Yasin, is not Amina's, but rather the son of a previous relationship al-Sayyid Ahmad had. Yasin lived with his real mother until he was nine, and then was "transferred to his father's custody". He is happy living in this household, and convinces himself that his stepmother "is all the mother I need", but his real mother resurfaces as an inescapable part of his life. Yasin, who is already working, takes after his father in his desire for personal gratification: drink and especially sex tempt him greatly. And while his brother Fahmy is shocked when he learns of their father's hard-drinking, womanising after-hours lifestyle Yasin is relieved and thrilled -- because that is exactly the life he'd like to lead.
       Fahmy is a university student: serious, devout, and with a budding political conscience, the one in the family who becomes most engaged in the national struggle for change. The youngest child is Kamal, still a schoolboy, and still able to get away with playing and acting childishly.
       The daughters are Khadija, already twenty when the book begins, and Aisha, who is sixteen. Aisha is the beauty, her only fault being that she is too skinny (plumpness is seen as being highly desirable, and there's a continuing effort to fatten the girls up throughout much of the book). One of the problems facing the family is that Khadija is not yet married, and that it's unseemly for the younger daughter to get married first; nevertheless, in a small break with tradition, Aisha is eventually married off first.
       The daughters live in complete isolation: they do not go to school and can not show their faces in public. Their parents' proudest achievement seems to be being able to say: "No man has ever seen either of my daughters since they stopped going to school when they were little girls." The girls' lives revolve entirely around the family household, where they help their mother, looking forward dreamily only to their one great ambition: to get married. Even within the house there is some segregation, as it is unthinkable that the women would eat at the same table as al-Sayyid Ahmad. This state of affairs is treated as entirely normal: they know no other lifestyle. Still, change is in the air. Other families do allow their women to go out in public. But it remains unthinkable in the Jawad household: Yasin, who eventually does get married (though that doesn't turn out quite the way he'd hoped), causes a major scandal when he takes his wife for an evening on the town, his father outraged that he would disgrace his family in this way.
       Yasin marries the daughter of one of al-Sayyid Ahmad's friends, but it is not a happy union. The irresponsible Yasin, still living at home, is quickly bored by married life. He's the type who, when praying:

He would not ask for repentance, since he secretly feared his prayer might be granted and he would be turned into an ascetic with no taste for the pleasures of life he loved and without which he thought life would be meaningless.

His children were meant to be a breed apart, outside the framework of history. he alone would set their course for them, not the revolution, the times, or the rest of humanity. The revolution and everything it accomplished were no doubt beneficial, so long as they remained far removed from his household.

Yasin probably detested the English as all Egyptians did, but deep inside he respected and venerated them so much that he frequently imagined that they were made from a different stuff than the rest of mankind.

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Links:

• American University in Cairo Press publicity page
• Anchor publicity page
• Unionsverlag publicity page

• anenduringromantic
• Books, yo.
• Critiks (French)
• Diary of an Autodidact
• evening all afternoon
• ImageNations
• Kirkus Reviews
• Me, You, and Books
• Novel Readings
• Of Books and Bicycles
• Publishers Weekly
• This Thing of Ours
• Wamathai
• Washington Times
• We Need to Talk About Books

• See the complete review's Naguib Mahfouz page.
• Naguib Mahfouz at books and writers
• Nobel Prize in Literature (1988)

• Adrift on the Nile
• Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth
• Arabian Nights and Days
• Before the Throne
• The Beginning and the End
• Cairo Modern
• The Cairo Trilogy:
  • Palace Walk
  • Palace of Desire
  • Sugar Street
• The Coffeehouse
• The Day the Leader Was Killed
• The Dreams
• Echoes of an Autobiography
• The Final Hour
• Heart of the Night
• In the Time of Love
• The Journey of Ibn Fattouma
• Karnak Café
• Khufu's Wisdom
• Life's Wisdom
• Love in the Rain
• Morning and Evening Talk
• Naguib Mahfouz at Sidi Gaber
• Respected Sir
• Rhadopis of Nubia
• Thebes at War
• Wedding Song

• See Index of Arabic literature
• See Index of Books by Nobel laureates under review
• Other books from American University in Cairo Press

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About the Author:

       Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz (نجيب محفوظ, Nagib Machfus) was born in 1911 and died in 2006 He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1988.

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