A different look at Egypt

In the Eye of the Sun - Ahdaf Soueif (Anchor Books, 1992, 2000)


Several years ago, I received a notebook titled "Books to Check Out" and ever since, I've made a valiant effort to keep my list of books to read in one place. (With mixed results.) Anyway, from time to time, I go back to the early entries that are yet to be crossed off, and wonder why I haven't gotten to them yet. Usually, it's because I can't find them in a local library. But now I have access to oodles of libraries in California, so I'm going back through.

My friend Mariam recommended Soueif to me early early on. This must have been shortly after we graduated, or maybe soon after she arrived in Cairo. And now, years and years later, I have finally read it. This was a challenge, with my work and life schedule being what it is. 785 pages.... thank goodness for a one-day business trip that gave me uninterrupted hours and hours to read. (I probably read 1/3 of the book that day.) But this is in some ways actually quite a quick read; the pages generally turn in a hurry.

Asya is a young member of the Cairene middle-class, I guess you'd call it. The daughter of two professors, her future in academia was never in doubt. She is romantic and headstrong, and eagerly falls in love at 17, and less eagerly waits until graduation before marrying Saif.

Thanks to the structure of the novel, which starts with 39 pages at the end of the 1970s and then doubles back to the beginning... to 1967, we know that things go wrong. And in some ways, the novel is just the path of how they get there. Asya and Saif made me a little crazy -- it's one of those love stories open to all sorts of interpretation. They met too young, perhaps. They never really knew one another, not really, and they just grew apart. A skeptic could quickly point out all the warning signs before their marriage. And yet, in another light, their love shines more brightly, and their troubles stem more from their failure to communicate. They misread one another again and again. And I longed for them to bridge that gap.

It comes out early on that Asya has an affair, so I don't feel like I'm spoiling anything. But to say too much more may bring on spoilers. Suffice it to say that at one point I grew sufficiently frustrated that I told my boyfriend that I wanted to punch the book. Some characters...... argh.

Oh, and the first half of the book laces Asya's life with the historical events unfolding around her, these latter reported in terse, journalistic style. Once she leaves for England, though, her internal world grows larger and larger, and we learn less about not only outside events, but even the lives of those she loves.

And lastly, a quote: "This [poetry] has to be what matters. Or a large part of what matters. How can people read it and just go on as though they'd been reading the newspaper or some geography lesson[...]?"