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A review by weaselweader
The Book of Cairo: A City in Short Fiction by
4.0
“ … intimate views of life, tinged with satire, surrealism, and humour”
When I booked a trip to Cairo, my first international post-Covid trip in almost three bleak stay-at-home years, I wanted a book that would give me a feel for the city and some small understanding of what makes it tick. I was searching for a book that would treat Cairo in a manner and with a level of importance that would effectively elevate the city itself to the level of a character in the story.
I had hopes but THE BOOK OF CAIRO was not that book!
In fact, far from providing any insights into Cairo’s nature, the stories in THE BOOK OF CAIRO rarely stray far out of the mental headspace of the narrators of the individual stories. They are little more than a collection of short-lived glimpses into the ruminations of a handful of Arabic men simply going about their daily lives and thinking their daily thoughts. And, lest my comment be misunderstood, I’ll rush to say that the stories, English translations from a handful of Egyptian authors, are definitely clever and eminently enjoyable. They are also unique in my reading experience to the extent that I’ve never read any English short stories quite like them. Perhaps (and I have no way of judging whether my guess is correct), these stories reflect a manner of thinking that is born and bred in a Cairene, (a way of thinking that is entirely foreign, and hence rather puzzling to me as a white North American reader). These stories may reflect the culture, societal values and norms that become second nature to a native-born Arabic speaker, someone close to the ideology of Islam, someone with a different ethnicity than my own, someone - a Cairene, an Egyptian, a native of the Middle East - with a personal or national history that bears zero resemblance to mine.
By all means, buy the book and enjoy a very diverse set of oddly compelling stories. But just don’t imagine that you’ll come away from the book informed in any measure about the city of Cairo.
Paul Weiss
When I booked a trip to Cairo, my first international post-Covid trip in almost three bleak stay-at-home years, I wanted a book that would give me a feel for the city and some small understanding of what makes it tick. I was searching for a book that would treat Cairo in a manner and with a level of importance that would effectively elevate the city itself to the level of a character in the story.
I had hopes but THE BOOK OF CAIRO was not that book!
In fact, far from providing any insights into Cairo’s nature, the stories in THE BOOK OF CAIRO rarely stray far out of the mental headspace of the narrators of the individual stories. They are little more than a collection of short-lived glimpses into the ruminations of a handful of Arabic men simply going about their daily lives and thinking their daily thoughts. And, lest my comment be misunderstood, I’ll rush to say that the stories, English translations from a handful of Egyptian authors, are definitely clever and eminently enjoyable. They are also unique in my reading experience to the extent that I’ve never read any English short stories quite like them. Perhaps (and I have no way of judging whether my guess is correct), these stories reflect a manner of thinking that is born and bred in a Cairene, (a way of thinking that is entirely foreign, and hence rather puzzling to me as a white North American reader). These stories may reflect the culture, societal values and norms that become second nature to a native-born Arabic speaker, someone close to the ideology of Islam, someone with a different ethnicity than my own, someone - a Cairene, an Egyptian, a native of the Middle East - with a personal or national history that bears zero resemblance to mine.
By all means, buy the book and enjoy a very diverse set of oddly compelling stories. But just don’t imagine that you’ll come away from the book informed in any measure about the city of Cairo.
Paul Weiss