WWW Wednesday # 199

Happy midweek everyone! Wow. We are already halfway through the week. How time flies. How has the year been going for you so far? I hope that the year has been kind to everyone. If not, I hope you will experience a reversal of fortune in the coming months. More importantly, I hope everyone is happy and healthy, in body, mind, and spirit.

With the midweek comes a fresh WWW Wednesday update, my first this year. WWW Wednesday is a bookish meme hosted originally by SAM@TAKING ON A WORLD OF WORDS. The mechanics for WWW Wednesday are quite simple, you just have to answer three questions:

What are you currently reading?
What have you finished reading?
What will you read next?

What are you currently reading?

From British and Irish literature to Japanese literature to Asian literature, my 2023 reading journey is shaping up to be a year of regional literature. August is not going to be any different as for this month, my motif is works of African literature. It has been nearly two years since I last hosted an African Literature Month. I already commenced this journey with Nobel Laureate in Literature Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace of Desire. So as not to lose the momentum, I have decided to read Sugar Street next, the last book in Mahfouz’s famed The Cairo Trilogy. I wasn’t planning on reading the book but since it is the final book in the trilogy – and because it was also rather slim – I decided to give it a go. The novel again transported me to Cairo; the three books in the series were derived from streets where homes connected to the family at the heart of the trilogy, the al-Jawad family. Ahmad Abd al-Jawad’s children are now all adults who each have their own children. Kamal, however, remained unwed. Instead, he bares witness to the changes taking place in his family; the change was parallel to the changes taking place in Egypt. I am more than halfway through the book and I can’t wait to see how Mahfouz wraps up his most popular work.

What have you finished reading?

I closed my foray into Asian literature with the work of a Nobel Laureate in Literature, Orhan Pamuk’s Nights of Plague. Since it has been my goal to read more works by Nobel Laureates in Literature, I decided to build momentum by opening my August reading month with Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace of Desire, the second book in Mahfouz’s most renowned literary work, The Cairo Trilogy. I read the first book in the trilogy back in December. I acquired the first two books in the series about five or six years ago but upon learning that they form part of a trilogy, I decided to put on hold my plan to read them until I complete all three books. I was finally able to obtain the final piece late in 2021.

The book was set a couple of years after the events of Palace Walk. The family moved on from the tragic death of Fahmy who was often referred to as the most promising of Ahmad Abd al-Jawad’s three sons. After grieving for his son, Ahmad Abd al-Jawad returned to his old ways. He again became a regular at entertainment and drinking bars. Meanwhile, his wife, Amina, was slowly wielding authority over the household. The heart of the story, however, was Kamal, the youngest of the couple’s children. He was about to enter university. He was planning to pursue a degree in teaching at the Teachers Training College. This disappointed his father who was hoping he would pursue more lucrative professions such as law. Kamal was not swayed by his father’s or his friends’ unfavorable opinions. Kamal was also planning to use this as a springboard for more intellectual pursuits. This story was juxtaposed against the changes that were sweeping Egypt. The sense of nationalism was slowly gaining ground. The political undertones, however, felt more peripheral as the book remained true to its original intent of being a family saga. It was a good book although not as impressive as the first book in the trilogy. It is a book that cannot stand on its own as it requires prior knowledge which can only be obtained from reading the first book in the trilogy.