Doubleday, 1990, 171 p. Translated from the Arabic, Al-Summan wal-Kharif (1962,) by Roger Allen, revised by John Roddenbeck.

There is a quality to some translated fiction that is opaque. Whether it is due to a too literal translation or a different cultural outlook it lends a certain distance to the reading experience. Something isn’t quite in focus. There is a little of that to Autumn Quail but the lack of sharpness here may simply be due to the nature of the novel’s protagonist.

After the Egyptian military coup of 1952 Isa ad-Dabbagh, a high ranking civil servant whose fortunes had previously looked assured, is dismissed from his post for corruption. With his future disrupted, his fiancée’s father’s permission for the marriage now refused and unwilling to compromise by getting a job he dithers through the days, not settling between remaining in Cairo, Alexandria or Ra’s al-Barr, allowing Riri, a prostitute he encounters on the Alexandria Corniche, to keep house for him (a mutually beneficial arrangement till he throws her out when she becomes pregnant,) making a marriage with a much older woman whom he does not love and taking to gambling unsuccessfully. A friend tells him, “You’re a boat drifting without a sail.” Only after the Suez crisis and further encounters (with a now successful Riri, and with a man for whose imprisonment he had once been responsible) does he begin to reassess his life.

The introduction (as usual I left it till after reading the novel proper – and it did contain spoilers) suggests Mahfouz wrote this partly to express his disquiet with the way that the 1952 revolution had evolved. Throughout there was the sensation that perhaps you have to be Egyptian to understand all the implications and nuances Mahfouz was writing about. It’s perfectly serviceable fiction but I didn’t really connect with it.

Pedant’s corner:- shaikh (usually sheikh,) “who let’s himself” (lets,) oblivious of (oblivious to,) “a group of economists were going to hold a discussion” (a group was.)