Summary
Novelist and sociologist whose Days of Dust is read in “Arabic Prose and Prose Fiction After 1948”, the fifth essay in Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, as the stage of disillusion after 1967, a novelist of good will whose scene is an arena for continual struggle (Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, PDF p.78-79).
Details
- In Days of Dust he examines responses in Beirut to an Arab political calamity which ought to be understood in terms of failure, not in those of an enemy’s victory; unlike Flaubert he shows a genuine kindness to his cast of actors, and sentiment is employed to heighten the human poignancy of the disaster (PDF p.78).
- His use of the scene shares Mahfouz’ interest in intense particularity, and shares with his classic study (done jointly with Peter Dodd) of the 1967 Palestinian refugee exodus, River without Bridges (1968), the practiced sociologist’s focus on the minutiae of everyday life (PDF p.78-79).
- His scene is dominated by the almost hateful sequence of six days, amplified into a wide-ranging geographical and emotional voyage from Beirut to Amman to the West Bank (PDF p.79).
- As his latest sociological work shows, he is increasingly concerned with what seems to be an inherent resistance in particular Arab societies to coherent unity (PDF p.79).
Related pages
Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Nagib Mahfouz, The scene