Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz reaches back millennia to his homeland's majestic past in this enchanting collection of early tales that brings the world of.
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Hardcover , 79 pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Voices from the Other World , please sign up. Be the first to ask a question about Voices from the Other World. Lists with This Book. My arrogance has been tested this weekend and my reading has been restless.
I spent a hundred pages each on a couple of books before tossing them aside. I still feel whole. I was alerted to a good book sale Friday evening by the server at my favorite artisan pizzeria and awoke yesterday to record Manchester United before venturing out. I bought 25 books and my aching biceps are testament to my delight. Amongst this haul was Ahdaf Souef's Cairo -- her account of Tahrir Square and its promise and c My arrogance has been tested this weekend and my reading has been restless. Amongst this haul was Ahdaf Souef's Cairo -- her account of Tahrir Square and its promise and collapse.
I am eager to read that but thought I would broach other Egyptian texts beforehand. Voices contains a number of historical fiction pieces Mahfouz wrote in the s and 40s which had been unavailable to Anglophones until the last 20 years with their translation to English. Each reveals the timeless traits which befall humanity. Each is relatively brief but rich in detail. I admit I know very little about ancient Egypt and I would like to remedy that. My deficit didn't appear to hamper my enjoyment.
View all 12 comments. Nov 04, Mohammed rated it really liked it Shelves: I wanted to start reading this important writer with an early collection. I wondered how good he was as young writer, what he did with ancient Egyptian history. Of the 5 short stories only the conventional supernatural story "The Mummy Awakens" was somewhat weak.
The other stories like "Evil Adored" was very smart, social critique and strong retelling of how life was then. These short stories offer brief glimpses of their author's emerging talent, but, when these were written, Mahfouz was not yet at his best. While the tales are not without moral value--they function well as modern fables--there are moments when they feel flat.
This is not the first book I would recommend to readers interested in Mahfouz. The edition is not well edited: Feb 28, Amir Seyab added it. A wonderful story by Naguib Mahfouz.
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Oct 15, Jim rated it it was ok. But the book was thin and Naguib Mahfouz had won the Nobel Prize so I thought this might give me a taste of his writing without committing myself to a long novel. So I expected to be disappointed and that was pretty much a self-fulfilling prophecy because I was. But it just stops. The one I enjoyed the most was the final piece, the title story, in which we follow the final few hours of an Egyptian writer living at the time of Rameses II and his first few weeks coming to terms with the afterlife.
The other were little morality tales: What did he expect to happen? I was just the wrong reader for this book. These stories were so deliciously good I can hardly believe it! It is not hard to understand why Naguib Mahfouz was the first Arab to be awarded the Nobel prize in literature. He so eloquently blends his brilliantly imaginative fiction with our magnificent historic times!
Naguib Mahfouz is a literary master, sowing our modern day plights into the cloth of glorious history and characters. The parallels drawn in some of this collection and the literary genius displayed in others will leave no doubt in anyone's mind that Naguib Mahfouz is one the best writers of Egypt and of our time on a wider scale. May 14, Mark Patton rated it it was amazing Shelves: A remarkable collection of five short stories by the Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author.
One of the stories, "The Return of Sinuhe," is an adaptation of a genuinely ancient text, but three of the others could easily be taken for ancient tales, incorporating historical characters and written in a form that comes close to a fable or, in the case of "Evil Adored," a parable. The exception is "The Mummy Awakens," which appropriates the Hollywood trope of a reanimated mummy and sets up a confrontat A remarkable collection of five short stories by the Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author.
The exception is "The Mummy Awakens," which appropriates the Hollywood trope of a reanimated mummy and sets up a confrontation between the long-dead Egyptian general and an arrogant Turkish pasha, contemptuous of the Egyptians he rules. This story clearly and powerfully speaks of Egypt's colonial experience, but the others are solidly rooted in a clear and very believable vision of her Pharaonic past.
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Gloriously written, and a true revelation to me. Naguib Mahfouz takes us into ancient Egypt in this book of five stories. Although we are transported into an entirely unfamiliar world Mahfouz has a way of bringing differing worlds together. We meet a mysterious stranger who enters a village to teach virtue and justice, a powerful King with a lesson on forgiveness, a mummy who re-enters the modern world after his tomb is disturbed by a wealthy man, and the tale of two brothers who share a common interest but are separated by decades and false a Naguib Mahfouz takes us into ancient Egypt in this book of five stories.
We meet a mysterious stranger who enters a village to teach virtue and justice, a powerful King with a lesson on forgiveness, a mummy who re-enters the modern world after his tomb is disturbed by a wealthy man, and the tale of two brothers who share a common interest but are separated by decades and false assumptions.
In the final tale we are allowed to get inside the head of a dying man as he leaves his earthly body, is mummified and entombed, it is an extraordinary piece of writing confronting the ultimate human condition of death and imaging the afterlife. Mahfouz demonstrates his gift as an ageless, and exceptional, storyteller not just for Egypt but for the world.
[PDF] Voices From the Other World Ancient Egyptian Tales
May 09, Zuchra Pipin rated it it was amazing. Jan 05, Susan Jo Grassi rated it it was amazing. I don't know why I picked this book up but I certainly am glad I did. It contains 5 short stories dealing with Ancient Egypt.
The stories are written like fables but are all extremely intriguing, especially the final one about death. I would definitely recommend this small book to anyone who wanted something light and very well written. This book is disappointingly short, and contains only four short stories from the renowned Egyptian author. He tells us how he felt when he saw that his family and friends wept; and with the embauming of his corpse He tells us how people are mistaken. That the only thing that counts is the happiness and the sunshine in life after dead..
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I sank into eternity! If they knew the truth about it, they would seek it out as they do with well-aged wine, preferring it over all others. Mahfouz is a great poet. We use cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. Make sure to accept our cookies in order to get the best experience out of this website. If you would like to read more about this check out the Privacy Policy page. My Shopping Bag 0 Item You have just added: You have 0 more Item.
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