Fiction Review: Morning and Evening Talk

The Financial Times (Review by Maureen Freely)

Morning and Evening Talk: A Modern Arabic Novel By Naguib Mahfouz
Translated by Christina Phillips
American University in Cairo Press

If the universal is the local without walls, the late writer Naguib Mahfouz was its master. Though most of his work was set in his native Cairo, each of his neighbourhoods was distinct from all others. His characters defied generalisation, even as they reflected the customs, conditions and political upheavals of the day. The same might be said of the author. When he won the Nobel prize in 1988, Mahfouz was praised for creating “an Arabian narrative art” that applied “to all mankind”. Because he was the first winner from the Arab world, the emphasis was on his nationality. But what really set him apart was his narrative artistry.

Mahfouz died in 2006. In Morning and Evening Talk, his last novel, he sets the bar high, refusing all the classical unities. Instead of rooting his story in one place, he flits between Cairo and the countryside. Instead of following a chronology, he races back and forth along a 200-year timeline. And instead of one story, he offers us 67. Each takes the form of an informal obituary – a life as it might be described by a wise neighbour. Together they describe the fortunes of three families joined by friendship, feuds and marriage.

See the above page for the entire review.