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Cairo Modern

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Cairo Modern

RRP: Price: £15.99
Haus Price: £12.79 Friends of Haus: £11.99

Publication Date:
2008-09-01

ISBN:
978-977-416-156-8

Format:
Hardback

Territory:
UK & Commonwealth

Category:
AUC Fiction - Distributed Titles

Pages:
208

By Naguib Mahfouz Translated by William M Hutchins

Mahgub Abd al-Da’im is a scamp who fancies himself a nihilist, a hedonist, an egotist,but his personal vulnerability is soon revealed by a family crisis back home in al-Qanatir, a provincial town on the Nile. This cautionary morality tale about self-defeating egoism and ill-digested foreign philosophies comes from the same period as one of the writer’s best known works, Midaq Alley. Both novels are comic and heart-felt indictments of human nature and our paltry attempts to establish just societies.

Reviews of Cairo Modern

'Within this maze of choices and consequences, all that Maghub has to guide him are his patchwork of principles or non-principles (depending on your point of view). This is where Naguib Mafouz’s semi-detached, third-person narrative shows its merits as it unravels the story without judgement allowing the reader to tumble into the story outraged or sympathetic in equal measure.

Therein ultimately are Maghub’s challenges in Cairo Modern: Can he tell the difference between what is real and imagined progress? Can he control his impulses? And will he be able to live with the consequences of the actions he takes, even if he has convinced himself that morals and judgement mean nothing to him? This juxtaposition of real problems and one man’s abstractions of philosophical positions lays the foundation of an entertaining drama, which is shot through with Naguib Mahfouz’s dry humour. Cairo Modern may be a tad didactic for modern tastes, but for its time it is actually a very liberal book and remains over sixty years after it was written a compelling read.'

- Gently Read Literature, September 01 2008

To read the complete review click here.

'Mahfouz, who wrote more than 50 works ranging from novels to plays, was a close observer of Egyptian society, recording its foibles and its eternal struggle at the intersection of East and West. As 'Cairo Modern' opens, Mahgub and his pals debate the pros and cons of various philosophies as cures for what ails Egypt. One friend is wedded to Islam, another to socialism, a third to a nationalist party with capitalist leanings.

Mahgub, for his part, opts for 'liberation from everything: from values, ideals, belief systems and principles, from social culture as a whole.'

Though the book is set in 1930, it bears a sad resemblance to Cairo in 2008. Now as then, vast social and economic inequalities rule. Islam vies with secularism to win hearts and minds. College graduates face the prospect of dead-end careers, yet engage in the same kind of high-minded and formal political debates found in this English translation.'

- Bloomberg, 20 June 2008

To read the full review click here.

'What's also striking is how modern Cairo Modern feels -- or rather, how little has changed. There are some differences, but many of the basics -- from the relationships with the women to the government bureaucracy (and becoming part of that) -- remain much the same. Update some of the technology (and change the political background) and Cairo Modern could almost be a convincing contemporary tale.
Mahfouz seems a bit undecided in how to let his story unfold, as Mahgub's three school-friends aren't ideally used as a counterpart to his story, and he ties things up a bit quickly in bringing the story to a close, but overall Cairo Modern is a solid and often gripping novel, well-conceived and with a good mix of the bleak and the (darkly) humorous. Worthwhile.'

- The Complete Review

To read the complete review click here.

Review of Cairo Modern in Shelf Awareness -

'Four graduating university students are leaving campus arm-in-arm on a Thursday evening in Cairo as the story begins in Nobel Prize-winning Naguib Mahfouz's newly translated novel. The story of crisscrossing, intersecting lives unfolds at that exciting, unpredictable time in history when women first began attending universities. Of the four young men who form the emotional center of the novel, three are idealistic and righteous, the hope of Egypt--and one is a complete scoundrel, from whose viewpoint the story is told.

When his father suffers a stroke and can no longer keep his job, Mahgub's funds are cut off, just as he's about to graduate. Ruthless and merciless, borrowing desperately from friends and relatives, Mahgub is intent on working his way up the social ladder, and he's certainly bold and selfish enough, though not quite as seasoned as he thinks he is about the unpredictable rise and fall of government officials. In an attempt to save himself by landing a government job, he agrees to become a 'husband' for the girlfriend of a powerful minister, Qasim Bey, sharing bed rights with the minister, never dreaming that he already knows the mysterious woman he is agreeing to marry sight unseen.

Egyptian master Mahfouz writes like an ancient Orient Express still chugging along in perfect condition, old-fashioned in almost every way, with a big Dickensian heart that seems to forgive and understand just about everyone. Crafty and unhurried, Mahfouz steers the narrative with a compassionate, frequently ironic hand, so subtle you're halfway to your destination before you realize where he's taking you. Midway through the novel, this cagey old master reveals a well-prepared shocker, which launches the story toward disaster.

The translation by William M. Hutchins is so clean you don't notice it. The morally compromised antihero is the perfect hero for our times, anxious and cunning, insecure and heartless, and somehow in spite of everything sympathetic. An ornate formalism in the plot structure moves the story at a slightly slower speed than most contemporary fiction would dare, and yet Cairo Modern remains constantly fascinating, down to the last detail.--Nick DiMartino

Shelf Talker: A story of intersecting lives in Cairo in the 1930s by Egyptian master novelist Naguib Mahfouz: fascinating, ornate and compassionate.'

http://news.shelf-awareness.com/ar/theshelf/2009-12-04/book_review_cairo_modern.html

Review of Cairo Modern from the Library Journal, December 2009
'An early work by the only Arab writer yet to receive the Nobel Prize in literature, Cairo Modern was originally published in 1945 and was first issued in English in 2008 by the American University in Cairo Press, in the same translation that appears here. His fifth novel overall and the second to be set in 20th-century Egypt, it captures Mahfouz in a fiery, youthful stage. Though largely a work of social realism, the story has strands of the existentialism that would figure heavily in Mahfouz’s later novels. Mahfouz explores the lives of several recent university graduates in 1930s Cairo, particularly that of Mahgub, a poor but ambitious young man whose life spirals out of control as he fiercely pursues a place among the upper class. Throughout, Mahfouz displays a mastery of character development and strong control of his themes, mainly the consequences of trying to escape one’s fate. VERDICT Cairo Modern reads like a classic, gripping the reader from the first pages, a testament not only to Mahfouz but to translator Hutchins.'

Review in Counterpunch by Charles R. Larson: http://www.counterpunch.org:80/larson03122010.html

'What a wonderful surprise: an early Naguib Mahfouz novel, Cairo Modern, published in Arabic in 1945, and only now translated into English. Even better, the novel is a gem, the perfect introduction to Mahfouz’s work if you have never read any of his other novels.'

A brilliant review from the Huffington Post by David Shasha, 7 April 2010:

'A fascinating example of human pain, degradation, and the tyranny of social relations.'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-shasha/naguib-mahfouz-the-author_b_527890.html