Fiction review: Bahaa Taher's Sunset Oasis

Montreal Gazette (Ian McGillis)

Many readers whose familiarity with modern Egyptian fiction might have begun and ended with Naguib Mahfouz were suddenly presented with a writer whose body of work, if not quite Mahfouzian in scope, is deep and varied: six novels, four story collections, numerous plays and non-fiction works, all apparently very well-regarded in the Arabic-speaking world.

Now, a year later, the novel that won Taher the prize is accessible to English-language readers.

Sunset Oasis is historical fiction with a strong element of the exotic, but it’s clear very soon that Taher has no interest in providing escapist fare. The setting is 1890s Egypt, where a nationalist movement is simmering under British colonial rule. The dominant voice among a shifting set of narrators belongs to Mahmoud, an ineffectual police officer inclined toward melancholy who finds himself out of favour with the current regime. Assigned to oversee the remote Berber settlement of Siwa – a virtual death-sentence posting, as the two preceding district commissioners have been assassinated – Mahmoud reluctantly takes along his Irish wife, Catherine, an amateur archeologist keen to investigate the legend that Alexander the Great might be buried there.

Once they’ve arrived, their apprehensions about a cold reception are soon confirmed. Siwa in the late 19th century, it’s evident, is a place where no one can trust anyone, and the tension plays out at every level.