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Title	:	Palace Walk (The Cairo Trilogy #1)
Author	:	Naguib Mahfouz
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	First Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 501 pages
Published	:	1990 by Anchor (first published 1956)
Categories	:	Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Northern Africa. Egypt. Novels. Cultural. Africa

Palace Walk (The Cairo Trilogy #1)

Naguib Mahfouz

Paperback | Pages: 501 pages

Rating: 4.17 | 14006 Users | 1443 Reviews

Description Concering Books Palace Walk (The Cairo Trilogy #1)

The story of a tyrannical father in Cairo at the time of World War I. He belongs to the ultraconservative Muslim Hanbali sect. His wife sits outside his bedroom door each morning waiting to be called in to help him dress. His four children, two girls, three boys, kiss his hand each morning. He keeps his boys in line by beating them on the soles of their feet. His children and his wife cannot ask him a question unless they first ask his permission to speak. They call him ‘sir,’ even his wife. And yet they all think and say they love him.



The patriarch is 45; his wife is 39. She married him when she was 14. He says to his wife “You’re just a woman, and no woman has a fully developed mind.” She and her daughters are basically prisoners in their house. A maid goes to market and does errands. They do not attend religious services. The only exceptions are twice a year visits, accompanied by the man, to his wife’s mother’s house, and rare visits to a next-door neighbor’s home. His wife considers his drinking his single evil. She thinks even the women he consorts with are better than what his father did – take multiple wives.

He owns a goods shop to which he goes everyday to keep the books. He does not reappear at home until after his carousing with his good male friends, booze and women (despite his supposed strong religious beliefs). Outside the home, he’s the life of the party. His wife waits up for him to help him to bed.

His eldest son, a legal secretary, was born to another woman he divorced. Of course in that culture, the child stays with the father. The son, now in his early 20’s, and his father, are disgusted by the fact that the boy’s mother has had two other husbands since the divorce and is considering a third marriage. The oldest boy gets married but he is just like his father in his drinking and womanizing. But the new wife won’t put up with him. Essentially the oldest son takes too much after his father. When the young man’s wife asks for a divorce, the oldest son thinks: “There was nothing strange about a man casting out a pair of shoes, but shoes were not supposed to throw away their owner.”



There’s a lot of action that keeps the story moving, almost like a soap opera. There are three weddings. Two daughters move out; a daughter-in-law moves in. The youngest boy is always in trouble with childish adventures. The middle son, a law school student, secretly take part in the demonstrations for Egyptian independence and he hands out leaflets. While his father supports the petition for independence, his son has to keep his activities secret from his father. The British military sets up an encampment in their street (Palace Walk) to clamp down on demonstrations. The Egyptians are particularly upset by the brutality of Australian soldiers. (It’s WW I, so the Australians are helping Britain hold on to its colonies while the regular British army fights in Europe.)

The story ends in a tragedy.

There is good writing:

“…for love is like health. It is taken lightly when present and cherished when it departs.”

“When you son grows up, make him your brother.”

Some nitpicking: why give us three characters with the names Zubayda, Zanuba and Zaynab?



The author, Naguib Mahfouz, is regarded as the classic man of Egyptian letters and the one who brought the modern novel to Egyptian readers. Mahfouz has been compared to the giants of nineteenth-century European realism such as Dickens and Balzac. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1988. (And the author was stabbed in the neck by a religious fanatic, carrying out a fatwa because of the heresy of his writings. The author survived) Most of his novels are about modern Egypt and he is best known for his Cairo Trilogy. Many of his novels are set in small neighborhoods that are worlds unto themselves such as this book, Midaq Alley (which I reviewed) and his Cairo Trilogy.

All in all, a very good read. It’s a long book (500 pages) but it’s fascinating to learn the daily details of how an Egyptian household lived at this time, even if it was not a typical household. There is a lot of action, as I said above, like a soap opera, so that keeps the story moving.

Top photo of Cairo around 1910 from gettyimages.com; middle photo from egyptianstreets.com
Photo of the author from egypttoday.com

Point Books In Pursuance Of Palace Walk (The Cairo Trilogy #1)

Original Title:	بين القصرين
ISBN:	0385264666 (ISBN13: 9780385264662)
Edition Language:	English
Series:	The Cairo Trilogy #1
Setting:	Cairo(Egypt)

Rating Out Of Books Palace Walk (The Cairo Trilogy #1)

Ratings: 4.17 From 14006 Users | 1443 Reviews

Rate Out Of Books Palace Walk (The Cairo Trilogy #1)

The story of a tyrannical father in Cairo at the time of World War I. He belongs to the ultraconservative Muslim Hanbali sect. His wife sits outside his bedroom door each morning waiting to be called in to help him dress. His four children, two girls, three boys, kiss his hand each morning. He keeps his boys in line by beating them on the soles of their feet. His children and his wife cannot ask him a question unless they first ask his permission to speak. They call him sir, even his wife. And

Men have the right to anything they want and women have a duty to obey is the philosophy upon which this cast of characters operates, and it sets the stage for moral outrage on the part of western readers, and self destruction on the part of some characters as their world is torn asunder with change.Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, a successful shopkeeper living in the Cairo neighbourhood of Palace Walk, is literally the king of his domain, ruling his family with a fundamentalist fist, while living a

I loathed the father and was incredibly frustrated with the mother. I had a difficult time understanding most of the characters. Sometimes, especially when there are the cultural and era differences there are here, I have tremendous interest in a book; here it made it very difficult for me to read it. Im not sure why as Ive adored plenty of books with evil or unappealing characters. I did begin to enjoy it a bit more toward the end and I should probably give the next two books in the trilogy a

Despite the fact that the father irritated me intensely with his hypocrisy, I loved this family saga set in 1900 (?) up to 1919 Cairo! I got involved with all the family members and learned a bit more about Anglo-Egyptian relations post-WW1 as well. I can see why Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize!

The way love can disregard fears, however, is an age-old wonder. No fear is able to spoil love's development or keep it from dreaming of its appointed hour.Palace Walk is a sweeping realist survey of a middle class family in Cairo. The novel covers two years or so from 1917-19, culminating in the Egyptian Revolution which overthrew the British Protectorate. The Abd al-Jawad family is dominated by the father, an ostensibly pious man who forbids his wife and two daughters from being seen, much

Mee's rating: 4.5/5First published at: http://www.meexia.com/bookie/2016/05/...Palace Walk is the first novel in the Cairo Trilogy by the winner of 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature, from Egypt - Naguib Mahfouz. First published in 1956, the novel started in 1917 in the midst of WWI. Egypt was occupied by the British, and after the war was over, talks of independence were rampant.We see Egypt through the viewpoint of a single family: the patriarch Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, his submissive wife Amina, and

Mahfouz is the only Arab writer to my knowledge to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. This particular novel is the first of three in his Cairo Trilogy, published in 1956 and translated into English in 1990. I am unsure what I expected when I began reading it. Within the past few months I had completed Lawrence Durrells Alexandria Quartet, and I suppose I expected something similar. I could not have been more mistaken.This work takes place in Cairo between 1917 and 1919, from the