In Ahmad’s mind, and his society appears largely to agree with him (even the women), women neither have nor deserve any rights. If the wife objects, then the matter is simply solved by the husband’s unilateral declaration of divorce and returning the obstreperous wife to her unwilling family. Happiness is something Ahmad doesn’t consider – his daughters should be docile enough to be happy with any man he chooses for them, and if his sons don’t like their wives, they can simply follow his example and lead most of their lives pursuing one exotic mistress after another. Ahmad is old-fashioned even in his own time, and exerts strict control not only over his daughters but his sons too, determined that they will marry as he directs, for the honour and enrichment of the family. This is a family saga, the story concentrating mostly on the development of the characters of the children as they approach adulthood and the all-important question of marriage. It took me quite a while to get used to this – I wanted anger against Ahmad and sympathy for his wife and children, but gradually I came to appreciate Mahfouz’ neutrality it’s as if he’s saying, this is how it was, I merely show it to you with no modern interpretation to obscure it.

Mahfouz tells and shows every aspect of the society the characters operate in – the middle-class of Cairo, educated, prosperous but not rich, strictly traditional but he leaves all evaluation of the characters to the reader.

It’s remarkably unjudgemental – I can’t remember another book where I felt such a complete lack of the author’s personal views coming through. It’s written in the third person, but the perspective shifts between the various family members so that we come to understand the inner thoughts and feelings of each. This is the story of Amina and Ahmad and their five children, set to the backdrop of the end of WW1, the rise of nationalism and the dying days of colonial Egypt.įirst published in 1956, it’s a historical novel, the first in Mahfouz’ Nobel Prize-winning Cairo Trilogy, describing a way of life that was already changing then and now seems positively archaic in its attitudes regarding the place of women and paternalistic power over children, even for a region that still has a very different cultural approach to these things than the West.

Now with her own children approaching adulthood, Amina prides herself on her docility and spends her life trying to be a perfect wife to Ahmad, a bullying husband and tyrannical father. They do things differently there… 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀Īmina is the wife of al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, married to him before she was fourteen.

Palace walk mahfouz