A review by jereco1962
The Mirage by Naguib Mahfouz

2.0

I had so many issues with this book that by pg. 135, I gave up. Mahfouz is obviously a talented writer, and I'll have to try something else by him, someday. But this tale of a mama's boy in Cairo is exasperating reading - and disingenuous: the character failed every grade in school more than once, yet the book is written in compound-complex sentences with a prose style that the narrator couldn't have. Compound that with the fact that he's so self-centered and pampered and lazy and... Well, it became too much for me to tolerate. I didn't want the narrator to find happiness: I wanted him to take the gas pipe.