“Don't go back over the past. Let it depart, never to return.”

[b:Palace Walk|762134|Palace Walk (The Cairo Trilogy, #1)|Naguib Mahfouz|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1644747130l/762134._SY75_.jpg|748227] captivated on all levels for me-- a delicious family saga, political upheaval in early 20th-century Cairo, scandals, unrequited love, affairs and the miserable unfairness of being a woman. In fact, I think the only reason I'm not rating this higher is because I was forced by real life to read it in stops and starts and couldn't fully appreciate it as I wanted to.

The book follows the members of one family as they navigate the tumultuous years preceding the Egyptian Revolution of 1919. Strict patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad rules over his meek, submissive wife Amina, and his five children: Yasin, a drunken lech who spends his evenings with music and women; Fahmy, a budding nationalist who's in love with the woman next door; Khadija, intelligent, sharp-tongued and "ugly" (naturally, my favourite); Aisha, a stunning beauty with multiple marriage offers; and Kamal, the youngest, who offers a child's perspective on the events of the novel.

It's very compelling and it's hard to pinpoint where the most tension comes from. The nationalist movement and the threatening presence of English soldiers? The fear of al-Sayyid Ahmad's temper and how this will affect the well-being of his family? Or the absolutely infuriating misogyny?

This is certainly not a good time or place to be a woman. Take this response from a male character when his wife seeks a divorce:

Which of them was the man and which the woman? There was nothing strange about a man casting out a pair of shoes, but shoes were not supposed to throw away their owner.

All of the women are at the mercy of the men in charge of their family and to be a woman left unmarried is to constantly fear for your future. Awful, yet it made it hard to stop reading at times.

I also loved the interactions between the siblings. Mahfouz captured the bickering, the jealousy, the rivalries and the love so well. I had fun despising Yasin and worrying about the others' fate. And I was surprised how complex a character al-Sayyid Ahmad came to be. I thought, in the beginning, that he was a person to be loathed, especially as we are first introduced to his wife Amina and get her perspective of living under a tyrant.

But when his perspective comes there's more to him than first appears. He is a multifaceted-- ofttimes sensitive --man who struggles to find the right balance in his role as husband, father, friend, Egyptian and Muslim.

I plan to start [b:Palace of Desire|5495|Palace of Desire|Naguib Mahfouz|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1644747175l/5495._SY75_.jpg|66038227] soon.