An eloquent lament.
A fictional memoir of the intense, symbiotic relationship between an Egyptian poet and the Arab world’s greatest female singer.
In rapt, lyrical prose, Paris-based writer and journalist Nassib spins a rhapsodic narrative out of the indissoluble connection between two creative souls inextricably bound by their art. His nameless protagonists, the poet and the singer, are based on historical figures Ahmad Rami and Om Kalthoum, and their story plays out against the transformative political events of 20th-century Egypt. Returning to his nation in the early 1920s, shortly after Independence Day, the poet is invited to attend a concert at which his words are brilliantly interpreted and sung by a young peasant girl dressed as a Bedouin boy. A spark ignites between the gifted writer and the astonishing performer, and he willingly agrees to write more aching poetry for her to sing. In keeping with the nation’s mood, the singer, whose fame advances rapidly, casts aside the influence of her lowly family to personify the modernism of the new age. Dubbed the “Star of the Orient,” she spends many years unmarried, although gossip about her private life abounds. Over time, their attachment becomes a voracious, destructive factor in the poet’s life. When relations are cool between them, he understands the full measure and pain of the inhuman force uniting them, which also drives a wedge between him and his wife Hoda. The diva performs across the Arab world and at every key national event, coming to embody the country’s progress as it moves through a military coup, the rise of Nasser, then the Suez era. By the time of the Six-Day War, she is over 60, and the defeat causes a collapse, but she rallies and leads the effort to mobilize the country. Her funeral in the 1970s, and Nasser’s assassination, mark the end of hope for “eastern modernism.”
An eloquent lament.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2006
ISBN: 1-933372-07-9
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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