Voices by Soleiman Fayyad
Requirements: ePUB reader, 181 KB
Overview: First published in Arabic in 1972, this is the only work in English translation by prolific short story writer Fayyad, and his only novel. It rivals the fictions of Naguib Mahfouz in its psychological depth and sharp social commentary.
Hamid Al-Bahairi, owner of elegant Parisian shops and hotels, returns to his birthplace, an impoverished Egyptian village that he has not seen since he was a boy of 10 three decades ago. In Fayyad's short, stunning novel, narrated in the alternating voices of the envious villagers, two cultures clash with disastrous results. To Hamid, his hometown by the Nile is crude, primitive, an embarrassment; to his French journalist wife Simone, it's quaint, exotic, grist for her newspaper stories. Humble shopkeeper Ahmed, Hamid's jealous younger brother, flirts with Simone, while their embittered old mother agonizes over whether her half-French grandchildren will be brought up Muslim or Christian, and whether Simone has had a proper female circumcision. The brutal, violent ending is a shocker.
The clash between the Orient and Occident is a well-worn novelistic genre in Egyptian literature, but the stories are usually of young Egyptian males who travel to Europe. As the translator says in his introduction, 'These novels inevitably end up asserting through their events the ethical superiority of the East over the technologically advanced but morally decadent West. Structurally Voices is the exact converse to these events.' Fayyad is a highly respected short story writer in Egypt, and as a short story Voices works brilliantly - a cautionary tale for all those who would flirt with different cultures.
Genre: General Fiction/Classics
Download Instructions:
http://www15.zippyshare.com/v/4633656/file.html
https://www.tusfiles.com/f4lzezl8125e
Requirements: ePUB reader, 181 KB
Overview: First published in Arabic in 1972, this is the only work in English translation by prolific short story writer Fayyad, and his only novel. It rivals the fictions of Naguib Mahfouz in its psychological depth and sharp social commentary.
Hamid Al-Bahairi, owner of elegant Parisian shops and hotels, returns to his birthplace, an impoverished Egyptian village that he has not seen since he was a boy of 10 three decades ago. In Fayyad's short, stunning novel, narrated in the alternating voices of the envious villagers, two cultures clash with disastrous results. To Hamid, his hometown by the Nile is crude, primitive, an embarrassment; to his French journalist wife Simone, it's quaint, exotic, grist for her newspaper stories. Humble shopkeeper Ahmed, Hamid's jealous younger brother, flirts with Simone, while their embittered old mother agonizes over whether her half-French grandchildren will be brought up Muslim or Christian, and whether Simone has had a proper female circumcision. The brutal, violent ending is a shocker.
The clash between the Orient and Occident is a well-worn novelistic genre in Egyptian literature, but the stories are usually of young Egyptian males who travel to Europe. As the translator says in his introduction, 'These novels inevitably end up asserting through their events the ethical superiority of the East over the technologically advanced but morally decadent West. Structurally Voices is the exact converse to these events.' Fayyad is a highly respected short story writer in Egypt, and as a short story Voices works brilliantly - a cautionary tale for all those who would flirt with different cultures.
Genre: General Fiction/Classics
Download Instructions:
http://www15.zippyshare.com/v/4633656/file.html
https://www.tusfiles.com/f4lzezl8125e