The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany

This is going to have to be a bit of a different review, not only because I no longer have access to the book (I know, I could check it out from the library...but that takes work) but also because it isn't going to make the cut, GASP!

We originally put this novel on the list because we were looking to add a bit of, shall we say, diversity to the list. Like the halls of congress, the western literary world is littered with old dead white guys with the occasional woman/minority thrown in. This book is apparently the highest selling book in the Arab speaking world, but I suppose we should not have confused popularity for quality. That's not to say it's a bad book, just not good enough to make the list.

The Yacoubian Building is the story of the residents of the Yacoubian Building, a real-life building in downtown Cairo. It jumps around between the lives of those who live in shacks on the roof of the building and those who live in the run down opulence below them. Almost exactly like the book cover above, whoa.

Readability: Easily read. My only issue was keeping track of names (probably due to my unfortunate ignorance of Arabic names) and difficulty with transitions between story lines.

Enjoyability: I never really got into it. I just kept reading it to, well, finish it, and then pawned it off on a friend as soon as possible (and I have a book collecting addiction, to a serious degree).

Favorite quote(s):,Favorite character:, Least favorite character: Yep, don't have the book anymore...

Social impact: As I said earlier, this is the top-selling novel in the Arab world and it does deal with many an important, and controversial, issue-homosexuality, terrorism, women's roles/sexuality, poverty etc. but it deals with them in a way that, no offense intended, feels very stale, old-fashioned and sometimes insulting. I know, I should step back and view this from the position of someone in the Arab world where ideas like those explored in this book probably are fairly revolutionary but, from by white-person-privileged-American perspective it just doesn't work. It's sometimes like reading an 'enlightened' Victorian talk about 'women's problems.'

Greatest impact: I found the transition of one of the characters from a bright boy living in poverty to member of a terrorist cell fascinating.


Recommended for: People interested in learning more about Egyptians and Egyptian society, from a fairly mediocre book.

Overall: Eh.

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

Readability:

Through the first 7/8 of the book, an easy read. Prose is spare and not overly complicated, although it must be said that most of what happens is internal to the characters and some might say that not a lot happens. So that's the first 7/8. Then all of a sudden the last bit shifts and really feels more like a dream than anything else, or what it feels like to be inside a nervous breakdown. Actually a lot of stuff happens during this last section, but it is pervaded by the feeling of detachment or dissociation (or is that just the way the desert feels?).

Enjoyability:

I really really liked this book. I love the way Bowles describes the landscape, the desert: "By the road sometimes were high clumps of dead thistle plants, coated with white dust, and from the plants the locusts called, a high, unceasing scream like the sound of heat itself." I like the way you can FEEL the dichotomy of being a traveler, simultaneously attracted and repelled by the strangeness and otherness of this foreign place. There's this wonderful scene when Kit is homesick for Europe and pulls out all these extravagant silk dresses and then just curls up in them on her bed. There are these moments of striking beauty and then moments where all they can focus on is the flies or the heat or the food. Plus I liked that I didn't really know what was going to happen - there were several moments along the way when I just thought 'What?!'
Definitely a book and a writer I will come back to.

Favorite character: Probably Turner, just because he's such a cheerful and genuinely good-hearted fellow. Of course he does sleep with his best friend's wife, but he means well (is that any excuse?). I liked Kit in a lot of parts too, but get frustrated because she is has such a tendency to be dependent on others. I had high hopes for her during Port's illness when she stepped up and got them away from the Typhoid epidemic in S'ba, and then was taking care of him, but the ending makes me feel like maybe that was only possible because she was about to have a nervous breakdown.

Most un-favorite character: Mrs. Lyle. It's very hard to be sympathetic to someone who is a wealthy writer/photographer who spends all her time gallivanting around Africa, and yet is utterly bitter, critical, and ungrateful. Here's what Port has to say about her: "Her life had been devoid of personal contacts, and she needed them. Thus she manufactured them as best she could; each fight was an abortive attempt at establishing some kind of human relationship. Even with Eric [her son], she had come to accept the dispute as the natural mode of talking. He decided that she was the loneliest woman he had ever seen, but he could not care very much." I can only care enough to hate her a little.

Best Quotes:

"But not here in this sad colonial room where each invocation of Europe was merely one more squalid touch, one more visible proof of isolation; the mother country seemed farthest in such a room."

"As she stared she found herself wondering why it was that a diseased face, which basically means nothing, should be so much more horrible to look at than a face whose tissues are healthy but whose expression reveals an interior corruption."

"... it occurred to him that a walk through the countryside was a sort of epitome of the passage through life itself. One never took the time to savor the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and final, that there never would be a return, another time."

" 'Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus. It would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the truth--' She hesitated.

Port laughed abruptly. 'And now you know it's not like that. Right? It's more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don't even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it's nearly burned down to the end. And that's when you're conscious of the bitter taste.' "

"At least you would learn not to be afraid of God. You would see that even when God is most terrible, he is never cruel, the way men are."

"What delight, not to be responsible - not to have to decide anything of what was to happen! To know, even if there was no hope, that no action one might take or fail to take could change the outcome in the slightest degree - that it was impossible to be at fault in any way, and thus impossible to feel regret, or, above all, guilt. She realized the absurdity of still hoping to attain such a state permanently, but the hope would not leave her."

Recommended for:

People who liked The Quiet American or are fond of Hemingway, travelers and expatriates, and people who don't mind books where (according to Bowles) "all the action takes place inside people's heads."

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles: Our foray into Africa continues, and gets really strange.

Over a month has passed since our last post. All things considered it was a very strange month, so I suppose this is an appropriate book to jump back in with.

The Sheltering Sky begins as a kind of travelogue surrounding a married couple, Port and Kit, and their friend Turner's travels through post-war Northern Africa. Port and Kit have taken this trip as a last-ditch attempt at trying to save their failing marriage, and Turner is along for the ride for his own questionable purposes. They wander through Northern Africa engaging in various morally questionable actions and encountering a variety of characters, including the ever-present obnoxious Americans, until a series of events leads the book into some seriously existential and disturbing territory. (read it and you'll see what I mean)

Readability: This novel is very readable. The writing is sharp and the plot not only pulls you along with wondering what will happen next, but also with wondering what is going on in the character's heads.

Enjoyability: I'll admit, this book took me a bit to get into. At first I just kept thinking--ooh great, another book about Europeans traveling through Africa and spending a lot of time not enjoying themselves. Seriously people, why go to Africa if all you can do is complain about how 'uncivilized' it is? Somehow, though, it got under my skin. It certainly is a book I can keep thinking about and its dreamlike quality, combined with its non judgemental attitude, makes me keep questioning why the characters acted the way they did. A warning--the last 50 pages are a shocker.
Favorite quote(s):
"Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
"Humanity?" Cried Port. "What's that? Who is humanity? I'll tell you. Humanity is everyone but ones self. So of what interest can it possibly be to anybody?"
"In this way he missed the night's grand finale: the shifting colors that played on the sky from behind the earth before the rising of the sun."

"Its strange," he said with a deprecatory smile, "how, ever since I discovered that my passport was gone, I've felt only half alive. But it's a very depressing thing in a place like this to have no proof of who you are."

"Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus It would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the truth'-she hesitated.Port laughed abruptly. 'and now you know it's not like that. Right? It's more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don't even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it's nearly burned down to the end ant that's when you're conscious of the bitter taste."

"The new moon had slipped behind the earth's sharp edge"

Favorite character: Kit...I think. I had conflicting feelings about most of the characters in this book. They make poor decisions, complain, treat each other poorly but with all of this they feel real. What happens to Kit at the end of the novel is unsettling but could I say I wouldn't do the same? Probably not. Somehow, this end feels appropriate despite its distressing nature. In the end it's all about the desert anyway so, maybe that's my favorite character.

Least favorite character: The creeptastic caravan owners who 'help' Kit towards the end of the novel.

Social impact: Paul Bowles spent much of his life as a ex-pat in Northern Africa and clearly questions of identity for expats, as well as their detrimental affects on local culture, were an important theme for him and likely brought attention to the phenomenon. I couldn't help thinking though...man, I wish one of these novels was written by an African for a change...

Greatest impact: Identity and mortality are main themes of The Sheltering Sky and this novel does a great job examining these ideas. It also accurately portrays the feeling you get when you're in a strange country and the relationship of people who were once close but don't know how to get back to what they once had. What really got me ultimately was the desert itself and its power to change people.

Recommended for: People who enjoy novels about expats. If you like the work W. Somerset Maugham. If you like books that question the nature of identity/mortality. OR simply if it's a long, cold winter and you just need a book to make you feel warm again.

Overall:

"It was the end of the line"

And now we enter the...DUN DUN DUN...Heart of Darkness

"The Horror! The Horror!"--Kurtz

Whew, I've got to admit, when I finished this book I was happy. So very happy. That being said, I keep thinking about it, and I suppose that's a good thing, or if nothing else a mark of a good book.

'Heart of Darkness' is the story of Marlow, our storyteller, who has traveled deep into the jungles of Africa and becomes fascinated with a man named Mr. Kurtz, a man who at first seems to hold the promise of European ideals in the middle of the wilderness but who, as Marlow soon discovers, has actually gone quite mad, and who represents the worst possible side of excess. It is a dark, rambling, psychological, reflective, critical and mad novel in itself.

Readability: This has to be one of the least readable book I've come across of a long time. It's less than 100 pages long but took me over a month to read because it's just so dense. My reading pattern was this...read 4-5 pages, then fall asleep in awkward/embarrassing position. Also, Conrad needed to learn how to use paragraph breaks. Three-page-long paragraphs are NOT OK.

Enjoyability (is that a word?): I did not enjoy this book in the typical, man I sure do want to read this, way. I can't quite decide if I liked it or not, actually. It is extremely well written and does make you think-exploring some pretty universal themes. Ok, I did enjoy it...not as a page turner by any means but something that gets under your skin in other ways.

Favorite quote(s): If I can give this book one thing it is that it is infinitely quotable. The prose, dense as it is, can also be rather fantastic.


"They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a grand scale ,and men going at it blind--as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complection or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."


"Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you-smiling, frowning, inviting grand, mean, insipid or savage and always mute with an air of whispering, come and find out."


"It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream-making a vain attempt because no relation to a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams..."


"We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, ,as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day."


"She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul."


"But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad...He struggled with himself, too. I saw it,-I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that new no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself."


"Droll thing life is-that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself-that comes too late-a crop of unextinguishable regrets."


Favorite character: Uum, wow, I can't think of anyone and I just looked up character lists from the book to see if I'd forgotten someone but...nope. Marlow is probably the most interesting character. He is our storyteller, and he is a good one. I frequently didn't agree with him but he does have an interesting perspective. I don't really know what else to say about Marlow except that the entire story is told from his perspective and yet, I feel like we never really know him.

Least favorite character: Surprisingly not Kurtz. Yes, he is mad...completely, but I can almost understand his madness. The character who creeped me out the most was the Russian trader who Marlow encounters first in the village Kurtz is living. He is a loyal follower of Kurtz, basically telling Marlow how amazing he is, but someone who can blindly follow a madman sometimes seems less rational than the madman himself.

Social impact: This book seems represent a bit of a touchstone when it comes to writing about Africa. It is often seen in a negative light from an African perspective-'Things Fall Apart,' for example, being written as a response to the treatment of the people of Africa in this novel. Marlow's viewpoint on Africa, while undeniably racist and detached towards the Africans he encounters, was nevertheless a rather progressive viewpoint for the day.

Greatest impact: The movie 'Apocalypse Now' was based upon this book. Seeing as 'Apocalypse Now' is set during the Vietnam War, in Vietnam, and 'Heart of Darkness is set on the Congo River, in Africa, at the turn of the century shows that this book has some universal subject matter going for it. I'm thinking madness, yep. Now, I haven't seen 'Apocalypse Now' in a very long time so I can't vouch for how well this is done I'm going to watch it soon...and then I'll let you know...

Recommended for: People who think the jungle is a scary place and would probably make you crazy if you got stuck in it for too long (I mean, I'm afraid of this picture). If you like fairly dense, psychological, reading. If you're interested in colonialism as told from a slightly different viewpoint (and I mean, who isn't really?). Also, if you need a cure for insomnia.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Readability :

Although it is only about 100 pages long, this is probably not a book you'll finish in a day or even a week. I certainly didn't. Darkness isn't hard to read, it's just slow - dense paragraphs, embedded dialogue, and lots of metaphor and symbolism. You will need breaks (and maybe naps) along the way.

Enjoyability :

This is not a book anyone is going to describe by saying "oh my god I loved it so much!" That said, it's very well written and confronts immense topics like colonization, evil, and madness in a way that made me really think about them. This is a book I think would be most enjoyable reading with a class or bookgroup or at least another person - there's so much packed into it that you can't help but miss something if you're reading it alone.

Favorite quote(s):

"They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force - nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what could be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind - as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

"[The heads on stakes] only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him - some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at the last - only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion."

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."

Favorite character : I gotta say I didn't really like most of the characters in Darkness . So I will say who I was most intrigued by: The "wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman," a native, who does not interact with Marlow or the other invaders but holds significant and mysterious power of her own. What this is, however, we never learn.

"And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense winderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as thought it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul." Oooo.

Least favorite character : Kurtz, obviously. As a representative from "the Company" who once recommended "exterminate all the brutes," Kurtz is representative of the West and of the destructive power that it had on the cultures it conquered. He is presented as "mad," but instead of this madness being redeeming, we see it as the final result of power and corruption.

Recommended for : People interested in colonialism and Africa, people who aren't offended by racism in a historical context (let's be real, Marlow is kinda racist), people who won't be off-put by some heavy symbolism and metaphors.

Things Fall Apart...and do they ever.

Ok, I'm gonna be honest here. I read this book over a month ago and am just now getting around to reviewing it so...I'm sure this won't be as good as it could have been. This is the life of a grad student, I will not apologize.


Things Fall Apart is the story of a pre-colonial Ibo tribe in Nigeria. Its main character, Okonkwo, is the local strong man. He is sometimes proud, arrogant, and violent but is also hardworking, kind and sympathetic. He's a leader in his village, and successful head of a large family, but is still constantly afraid of appearing weak. This is ultimately his downfall. 'Things Fall Apart' is not really the story of colonialism that you might expect, those British bastards don't show up till the last 50ish pages, but instead is a view of African life from an African perspective, sadly a viewpoint we rarely see.

Readability: It's an easy read. I mean, this is something regularly given to high school students, and I hear they actually will read it, so it can't be too difficult. It will also only take you a few days to get through, especially if you're not a high school student.

Enjoyability (is that a word?): I enjoyed it, and I didn't expect to, so I guess that says something. It's not suspenseful or riveting by any means but has some other quality I can't quite describe. Besides being an almost anthropological account of precolonial life in Africa (which is interesting on its own. Twins are evil according to the tribe, for example, and are left in the forest to die), it's an intriguing account of human nature. Also, it has a bad ass cover (above).

Favorite quote(s): "Okonkwo felt a cold shudder run through him at the terrible prospects, like the prospect of annihilation. He saw himself and his fathers crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days, and his children the while praying to the white man's god. If such a thing were ever to happen he, Okonkwo, would wipe them off the face of the earth." "It was like beginning life anew without the vigor and enthusiasm of youth like learning to become left-handed in old age." "He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger."


Favorite character: Okonkwo. This is partially because he is really the only character that is fully fleshed out in the novel. I liked some his wives, his children, some of the members of the tribe, but for the most part they feel one-dimensional. Okonkwo is a complex guy. I often didn't want to like him but, somehow, I did.

Least favorite character: The colonialists at the end. This is probably to be expected, as I am a bleeding-heart-liberal, but the last paragraph gave me chills. Seriously.

Social impact: This book was apparently written in response to 'Heart of Darkness' by Joseph Conrad. These two books could not portray Africa in a more different light. 'Heart of Darkness,' which we will be reviewing next, is rambling, racist, and European-centered. The view we get of Africa in 'Things Fall Apart' could not be more different. While we would expect Achebe to romanticize pre-colonail tribal life in Africa he doesn't . Life is instead shown as it was, with no judgement of if that way of life was better than than any other. It just...was...and should be respected as such.



Recommended for: Anyone interested in African life, stories that seem deceptively simple but aren't, fast reads that make you seem more intelligent when mentioned in conversation, or finishing up that list of 'books you probably should have read in High School but didn't.'

Overall: Much better, and more enjoyable, than I expected. Not something I'm going to go back and reread over and over but I'm glad I've read it.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Readability/Enjoyability: I have conflicting feelings about this book. I really really wanted to like it - this is one of the few books widely read in high schools that was not written by an old white guy, it is about seriously important issues like colonialism, it is set in a fascinating time and place... and yet. If I'm being honest, I found it sort of repetitive and not that interesting. The style is very abrupt and descriptive - there are very few passages in which we find out the emotional impact of events or what the characters are feeling or thinking (although, I do like all the proverbs). It's like a documentary but without any voice-over. This book is interesting from a historical and anthropological perspective, but as a book just to read for fun... nope, I'm not going to tell my friends they should read it.

Best quote(s):

This is what Okonkwo (the main character) thinks about the world:

"No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man."

"The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart."

I just like this description:

"At last the rain came. It was sudden and tremendous. For two or three moons the sun had been gathering strength till it seemed to breathe a fire on the earth. All the grass had long been scorched brown, and the sands felt like live coals to the feet. Evergreen trees wore a dusty coat of brown. The birds were silenced in the forests, and the world lay panting under the live, vibrating heat. And then came the clap of thunder. It was an angry, metallic and thirsty clap, unlike the deep and liquid rumbling of the rainy season. A mighty wind arose and filled the air with dust. Palm trees swayed as the wind combed their leaves into flying crests like strange and fantastic coiffure."

Favorite character: Ezinma, the daughter of one of Okwonkwo's wives (he has three). He says all the time that she should have been a boy because he basically likes her best. She's not a central character but I like that she was an Ogbanje, "one of those wicked children who, when they died, entered their mothers' wombs to be born again." She's precocious and touched by magic, and is as strong a woman as anyone is allowed to be in the Ibo culture.

Least favorite characters: Just personally, I'm not real fond of Okwonkwo. I can even pinpoint when it started: at the very beginning of the book, when he lets a kid named Ikemefuna, who was stolen from a rival village, stay with him for several years, and then helps kill him with machetes. Not cool.

Recommended for: People interested in Africa, colonialism, and other cultures. People who like proverbs. And yams.