It’s just that there are so many countries in the world and so many great books, movies, and music about and from them. I think I read more than the average person, but there isn’t enough time for all the books out there!
Anyway, Naguib Mahfouz is the only Egyptian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1988, for a body of work that included the Cairo Trilogy. The books cover the experiences of one extended family from the country’s 1919 Revolution against Great Britain to the 1954 overthrow of King Farouk. In Palace of Desire, the main character, Kamal, is trying to decide what to do with his college education and where he fits in Cairo society. His father is the sort of man-about-town who drinks hard liquor because the Koran only prohibits beer and wine. His mother lives her life almost entirely indoors, in purdah.
Kamal is trying to figure out how to make a life, and it doesn’t help that the woman he loves is in love with someone else.
It’s a good coming-of-age story in the midst of a society undergoing enormous change. Highly recommended.
