Palace Walk (Mahfouz)

Palace Walk: (Cairo Trilogy, Vol. 1)
Naguib Mahfouz (Najib Mafuz), 1956, 1990 English trans.
Knopf Doubleday
498 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385264662


Summary
Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad is the tyrannical head of his household, demanding total, unquestioning obedience from his wife, Amina, his sons, Yasin, Fahmy and Kamal, and his daughters, Khadija and Aisha.

A fearsome and occasionally violent presence at home who insists on strict rules of Muslim piety and sobriety in the house—his wife is rarely permitted to leave the house—al-Sayyid Ahmad permits himself officially forbidden pleasures, particularly music, drinking wine and conducting numerous extramarital affairs with women he meets at his grocery store, or with courtesans who entertain parties of men at their houses with music and dancing.

The family provides the novel with its structure, since the plot is concerned with the lives and interrelationships of its members. However, the story is not set in isolation; indeed, the characters themselves are important mediators between issues of local or wider scope.The theme of authority (particularly its establishment and subversion) is woven into both the maturation of the children of the el-Gawad family and the wider political circumstances which provide the novel with its temporal boundaries. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)