5/12/2023 0 Comments Sugar Street by Naguib MahfouzWhile on the surface there wouldn't seem to be many similarities, the conservative, family-focused, deeply religious patriarchy in which mothers dominated the home felt very familiar. The second thing was how much traditional Egyptian middle-class life in the 1920s and 30s as depicted in the book reminded me of Irish culture up until relatively recently. Two main things struck me while I read Sugar Street: firstly that while I don't know Arabic, I got a strong sense of the elegant economy and poetry of the written language from this translation. While in the other books the patriarch of the family is the central character, this book focused on the younger family members, particularly the bookish son Kamal and his two nephews, whose very different paths in life represent distinct political trends in early 20th-century Egyptian life. I haven't read the other books in the trilogy so I was starting backwards with this one, but there wasn't any need to have read the others to enjoy Sugar Street.
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