The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz

Cafe Society
1

Has anyone else read these books? I have found a few mentions of them in a search, but I did not see any kind of discussion.

Possible spoilers below:

I really enjoyed Palace Walk. I fell in love with the characters, despite their flaws. I found the description of family life fascinating and endlessly entertaining. While others have complained that the book had a glacial pace, I rather enjoyed enjoyed it.

Palace of Desire was good, though I did get tired of Kamal’s constant moanings about love. I still felt connected to the characters. I could even muster some sympathy for Yasin, mostly because the reader spent some time in his head and heard his inner turmoil. If it weren’t for Kamal’s ceaseless pining, I would have enjoyed this book as much as the first.

Now Sugar Street… I really didn’t like it. All of the promise from the first two books is gone, completely. I found Yasin disgusting. Kamal was tiresome. Almost no time was spent with individual characters. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the grandkids, because I had no connection whatsoever to them. Time passed in leaps and bounds. I found the constant political talk inane (especially since I know very little about Egyptian politics). I wanted to shoot Kamal and just get it over with. I felt Aisha’s destiny was tragic and ultimately pointless.

Now that I know how it ends, I almost wish I had stopped after the first book.

2

Good to know. I’m reading the first book now, and I’m pretty sure I won’t read the third one.

About a third of the way through Palace Walk I decided not to finish it. Then I read a little further because I didn’t have another book at hand, and got interested enough in it to want to finish it.

3

I hope my opinion alone convinced you not to finish the series! Even now, I find myself waffling over whether or not I regret reading the third book.

4

We’ll see. I’m still not done with Palace Walk.

If it makes you feel better, I’ll ask some more people for their opinions before I make up my mind about reading the rest.

5

It’s been a while since I’ve read the trilogy but I loved it. Well, I loved the first book, the second was liked, while the third was admired from a distance with the covers firmly closed. I was really disappointed in Kamal. He had such potential in the first book and he just philosophically whizzed it all away. I’m sure someone could make a case that he represented something about Egypt in the twentieth century, but he was really just a whiny boy who really needed to get over his First True Love.

I don’t see how Aisha could have ended up any other way, though. What options did she have? She was a part of the old ways and didn’t have the same outlook her daughters did. She finally got a rest.