Books like ثرثرة فوق النيل

What?! I didn't write my review yet? Sorry about that, folks. Luckily I scribbled some notes down in a notebook while I read it so I think I might be able pull together a few reflections. This book is a little odd, and not being a Naguib Mahfouz aficionado (yet), I'm not sure how it compares to his other books. It is a slim volume and a fast read. I enjoyed the prose immensely and did not feel like I was reading a translation (someday I will read it in Arabic! Someday, where are you?? Why are you so slow in getting here?) but something funny happened to me while I was reading it. After reading the first page or so I said to myself, "Huh? I've seen this movie!" so i stopped to do a Google search as a check against possible insanity. In this case, I was right, there is a film and I have seen it. Oddly, I cannot remember when or where but I think it must have been sometime in 2007 or 2008. Then another funny thing happened as I continued to read. I thought to myself, "I've read this before!" I am sure of it, but unlike in the case of the film, I have absolutely no recollection of when that was.Luckily for me, this book, even though it comes across as somewhat simple, has a lot for the reader to get into and think about. In fact, I gave it four stars because there were aspects that I did not understand at all and I have no way of knowing right now if I would give it five stars if I had understood these things. So after a third or fifth or sixth or fourth reading, I might amend my rating.Clearly I can't count, but that's not important.Anyway, from my philistine vantage, I thought the story was nearly perfect in the way it introduced the characters, built tension, and carried its themes (absurdity versus meaning, first and foremost; how a person functions or doesn't function in a society or political system that is functional or dysfunctional) through to the end. However, the ending itself was odd and confusing to me. I didn't feel like I had read a proper ending. I turned the page looking for more text but didn't find any. So I returned to the previous page and read it again. Same feeling. This time I turned the page and checked the binding to see if the last page had been torn out. Nope. Another reason for four stars instead of five, actually; although I am not sure if the problem is with me or the book. Sayyid Mahfouz, what was your intent??I know the bare basics of Egypt's modern history, but reading this book returned a feeling to me that I had felt when I visited Egypt in the winter of 2007--I want to learn more about all of Egypt's history. Ancient history is not boring! Nor is the history between ancient and now (or rather, Nasser's period, since that is the setting of the book and also when it was written). Anis, the protagonist, has fairly consistent hallucinations (I think they are hallucinations) throughout the story about historical figures and events--he receives a number of visits from Jonah's whale, for instance, emerging from the Nile--and although I'm familiar with each of them, I do not know their significance to an Egyptian person (or if they are even at all significant to an Egyptian person). Without that, I confess to feeling a little bit lost in that layer of the story.Perhaps someday Anis's hallucinations will make sense to me.