Palace of Desire by Naguib Mahfouz

Subtitle: The Cairo Trilogy Volume 2
(Book Review)

Started: January 25, 2018
Finished: June 20, 2018

This is the second book in the Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz.
I reviewed the first book in this trilogy--Palace Walk-- last September.  In that review I talked about the history behind this trilogy, and how I got interested in it.  So I suppose that there's no point in re-hashing all of that again.  If you want more background, see my original review of Palace Walk.  Or read the Wikipedia page on the Cairo Trilogy HERE.

The key points are:
1) This trilogy was originally published in Egypt in the 1950s, and is a huge classic in Egypt and the Arab world.  (I have an Egyptian friend who confirmed this for me.)
2) I first heard about this trilogy via Grant Voth's lectures on The History of World Literature in the "The Great Courses" series (A--recommended, by the way), and my own analysis is heavily indebted to Grant Voth.

I'm also going to try to avoid repeating myself too much from my review of Palace Walk about the tone and general tenor of the trilogy.  Much of the what I said about Palace Walk in terms of the general reading experience and pacing is true for the sequel as well.  I'm going to try to contain myself to talking about what is unique about the sequel.
And I'll also be giving away a few spoilers.

The Review
This book starts out 5 years after the end of Palace Walk, and continues the chronicle of the life of a middle-class Egyptian family for several years during the 1920s.

This was a politically turbulent time in Egypt's history.  (Egypt was still trying to secure independence from Britain, but also within Egypt itself factions were beginning to fight for control.)

One of the reasons I was interested in this series in the first place was because, as a history geek, I thought I'd pick up some history from it. But unfortunately I picked up very little.  The characters make a lot of passing references to political figures and events, but it's not really explained.  (I suppose Naguib Mahfouz was not originally writing for an American audience--he was writing for Egyptians who already knew the history).  You get some sense of the turbulence happening during this period, but you don't get any details, and it doesn't really impact the plot all that much.
The good news is, you don't need any of the history to understand the plot.  Although history geeks (like myself) will be disappointed that the book doesn't give a better history lesson, all you really need to understand the story is how the current events affects the emotional state of the characters,  and this is always narrated directly.

Much more relevant than the politics is the changing of Egyptian society which is happening here.  Although it's still happening slowly.  (There are hints that the younger generation is getting new ideas, but the old generation is still firmly in control).

Another big theme of the book is aging, and how time gradually destroys people.
Grant Voth had mentioned this in his lecture.  So I had known to look out for this theme.  But actually, it's so obvious you really can't miss it.  Right from the first chapter the narration pretty much hits you over the head with this.  Characters are thinking about how they are getting old, and how they are slowing down.

The patriarch of the family, Al-Sayyid Ahmad, is 55 at the start of the book, so he's right at that age where he is transitioning from middle-aged to old age.  And his body is catching up with him.  In the previous book, he had been infamous for his romantic affairs, and for his constant partying.  But now it is harder for him to attract women, and the partying is beginning to take its toll.
It's sad to see such a strong vibrant man beginning to lose his strength.  But at the same time, the reader knows that it is useless to lament this too much, because this is only natural.  (Or maybe it's more tragic precisely because it's natural? I don't know.)
Fellow blogger Blogging the Canon opens up his own review of this book with a long lament on his own aging.  And I almost feel obligated to launch into a similar lament.   It seems almost hypocritical to talk about aging as if it were something that only affected other people.   (I'm 40 now, but the way time is rushing by, I'm worried 55 will be here before I know it.  After all, it seems like only yesterday I was writing this blog post lamenting that I was turning 27, and those past 13 years just sped by.)

But actually, that's the thing, isn't it?  The reason books like this are noteworthy is that aging happens in real life more than it does in fiction.  We age in real-life, but fictional characters usually don't age.  For example Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Sherlock Holmes stories for 40 years in real life (1187-1927) but although the writer and the readers aged during this time, the character never did.  (Okay, if you want to be technical there is one story with an elderly Sherlock Holmes, but that is the exception--you get my point).
Of course Naguib Mahfouz is not the only writer to deal with aging and the passage of time.  There's a long literary history of documenting changes in families over time.  (Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann just off the top of my head.  And I'm sure a million other books)   But I'd still argue that it is comparatively rare.

Meanwhile, while one generation is fading out in Palace of Desire, another one is rising to take it's place.  The eldest son Yasin, now 28, is taking up his father's mantle with a vengeance, and doing all the womanizing and partying that his father once did.  (The individual decays, but society progresses--Grant Voth had highlighted this as another theme of the trilogy).

But the biggest change is the youngest son, Kamal.
In the previous book, Kamal was just a little kid, and the least interesting member of the family.

At the start of the second book, however, Kamal is 17.  And he's an intellectual now.  He's suddenly gone from a little kid who only got into mischief to a young intellectual with goals and desires.  (Kamal is roughly the same age that the author Naguib Mahfouz was during this same period of history.  So I suspected--even before I read it on Wikipedia--that Kamal was somewhat based off of Naguib Mahfouz's own youth).
As Kamal advances in age from 17, 18 and 19, Palace of Desire also perfectly captures what it is to be around this age.  Because of the stream of consciousness narration style, the reader is able to get intimately into Kamal's head.
On the one hand, Kamal's obsession with philosophy and ideal love make him seem pretentious and arrogant.  He is so full of himself that occasionally he is almost unbearable.  And yet on the other hand, it evoked a nostalgia in me for the time when life was seemed to be about pure ideals that were big and important, and that made you feel big and important because of your attachment to these ideals.  Somewhere in adulthood, you lose this feeling, and life just becomes about the day-to-day grind.
Kamal's romantic obsession is the same way.  He is obsessed with a girl.  The reader realizes very early on that Kamal has elevated this girl to such a pedestal that he could never possibly possess her in real life.  She has become such an object of reverence and worship to him that it is impossible to imagine him actually making a move on her.
(And, boy oh boy, does this ever characterize my own adolescence to a tea!)
Then the inevitable happens, and she winds up marrying another boy.  Leaving Kamal to wallow in self-pity for several pages on end.
On the one hand, it makes Kamal a very pathetic character.  And yet at the same time, once again, it made me nostalgic for the time in my life when you had these big emotions--when this idealization of romantic love seemed real, and there were emotions and ideas in the world which were pure and bigger than yourself.

A significant portion of this book (several chapters) is dedicated to Kamal's romantic obsession.  Since the ending is entirely predictable, some readers find this frustrating or boring.  (I read a couple reviews of this opinion.)
I personally thought that these sections could get a little tedious at times, but overall I was charmed enough by Kamal's young romanticism to forgive it.

Kamal's idealism also causes a crisis of faith, and by the end of the book he has lost his faith in religion (although he still believes in God).
There's an irony here, in that Kamal was one of the few members of the family who ever took religion seriously to begin with.  His father and older brother pay lip service to Islam, but they also don't think to seriously about it, and break the rules every night with drinking and adultery.  They are culturally Muslim, but don't take the tenants of the faith seriously.  And so consequently they are never bothered by the intellectual contradictions of the faith
But it is precisely because Kamal takes the faith so seriously that he can't handle learning about the contradictions.  When he finds out that the famous Muslim saint al-Husayn is not actually buried at the local Mosque (as he had been told all his life) he is devastated.

One of the more interesting parts of the book is when the father finds out about an article on Darwin that Kamal had published.  (Grant Voth highlights this part as an illustration of how the generation clash, and how the ideas of the younger Egyptians were conflicting with their elders.)  His father asks angrily "What sect does this Darwin belong to? He's an atheist, his words are blasphemous, and reporting his theory's a reckless act. Tell me: is he one of your professors at college." (p.357)

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This book is a classic.  (At least in the Arab World it's considered a classic.  And among university literary types like Grant Voth.  So I'm counting it as a classic).  But it also has all the appeals of a trashy soap opera.  So you can satisfy your high-brow and your low-brow cravings at the same time.
There's a lot of household quarrels that escalate into really big drama.

But there's also some interesting plot twists in the father and son relationship.  Both Yasin and his father end up falling in love with, and sleeping with, the same girls.
I initially read this as just cheap trashy sexual drama that somehow snuck its way into classic literature.  (And to give credit where it's due, it did make the story very interesting).
But The Washington Post review (LINK HERE) points out that this is an echo of The Brothers Karamazov, and that's probably not an accident.
Now I'm embarrassed that I didn't catch that on my own.  I read The Brothers Karamazov just last year, and should have remembered that.

...actually now that The Washington Post got me thinking about it, I'm beginning to realize there are a lot of echos of The Brothers Karamazov.  
Just like in The Brothers Karamazov, this family originally had 3 sons.  Just like in The Brothers Karamazov, each son has a different personality.  And, just like in The Brothers Karamazov, the father is a sensualist, and one of the sons is also a sensualist, and it is precisely the sensualist son that ends up competing with the father for the same women.
That, plus Kamal, as the intellectual son who also becomes the religious doubter, is a parallel for Ivan Karamazov.
All of this is probably deliberate on the part of Naguib Mahfouz.
(Of course, the parallels don't go all the way.  There's no exact parallel for Alexei Karamazov, and in the Cairo Trilogy, one of the sons is already dead.  But there's enough parallels to detect an influence).

***************

There's actually a lot more themes in this book that I haven't gotten around to, but I think I'll end this review here.  I think I've hit on the things that struck me the most.
See Blogging the Canon's review of this book here.
I had also talked about this book briefly before back in April in the vlog: The Books I'm Currently Reading .

Video Review
Video review HERE and embedded below:



Link of the Day
Chomsky on Moral Relativism & Progress