| Title | : | If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 164445081X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781644450819 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 186 |
| Publication | : | First published April 12, 2022 |
| Awards | : | Scotiabank Giller Prize (2022) |
A dark romance exposing the gaps in American identity politics, especially when exported overseas, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is at once ravishing and wry, scathing and tender. Told in alternating perspectives, Noor Naga’s experimental debut examines the ethics of fetishizing the homeland and punishing the beloved . . . and vice versa. In our globalized twenty-first-century world, what are the new faces (and races) of empire? When the revolution fails, how long can someone survive the disappointment? Who suffers and, more crucially, who gets to tell about it?
If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English Reviews
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...a big fat nope from me.
DISCLAIMER: like with any other negative review that I write I feel the need to remind ppl that my opinions/thoughts/impressions of a book are entirely subjective (scioccante) and that if you are interested/curious about said book you should definitely check out more positive reviews.
If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English implements many trendy literary devices. The two central characters remain unnamed and are referred to as the ‘boy/man from Shobrakheit’ and the ‘American girl’, there is a lack of quotations marks (although, although most dialogues appear in italics), and the narrative is structured in a supposedly experimental way so that when the pov switches between ‘him’ and ‘her’ we get a question that is somewhat related to the content of their chapter. As you can tell from my tone I was not a fan of these devices. They can work but here the sheer combination of all of them struck me as deeply affected and not even that innovative. The story, in broad strokes, could be summarized as: an alienated millennial Egyptian American woman goes to Cairo in an attempt at reinvention. Her shaved head and ‘western ways’ however make her feel like an outsider. She questions the way she is perceived in America, and how being in Cairo challenges her long-held identity and beliefs. We are never given too many specifics about her stay but the author does give us an impression of the ‘mood’ permeating her days in Cairo. Her navel-gazing does provide the occasional pearl of wisdom, but more often than not we are given the usual platitudes about belonging and its opposites. While the author does succeed in articulating her struggles with her dual heritage and her efforts and frustration to 'master' Arabic, I found her speculations to be, more often than not, all-flash and not substance. There are attempts at being edgy which come across as somewhat cringey and fairly prosaic.
‘His’ chapters are far worse. The man is a talking, breathing, living red flag. His traumatic experiences and drug addiction do not make him a nuanced character. While I appreciated that ‘she’ understands that his upbringing informs his misogynistic beliefs, which leads him to objectify women and much worse, I could not understand why she remains with him. She tells us that the man in question is a multifaceted individual, but we never see these ‘facets’ on the page. His sections, if anything, only show us his ‘vices’. His exaggeratedly perverted point of view also struck me as not entirely believable. He often refers to ‘her’ lips as genital-like or sees her lips and wonders what color her labia will be. The man is incredibly possessive, sexist, offensive, you name it…this results in a rather one-note cartoonish character. Their chemistry wasn’t there and their arguments left me feeling quite unmoved. The ending of their ‘troubled’ relationship feels rather anticlimactic. Maybe if the author had spent less time pursuing metaphysical questions and dedicated more time to fleshing out the voices of her two central characters I would have ‘felt’ more but since we get a recap of a relationship more than the actual relationship itself, I just could not bring myself to care. The occasional vulgar language was not thought-provoking or subversive and the author’s experimental structure and style were fairly banal. It’s a pity as I found the subject matter interesting (languages, identity, dual-heritage, cultural dissonance, etc..). I did not care for the way the author discusses queerness. She allows (as far as i remember of course) a page to the matter. The girl says she’s queer, but the context in which she says this is weird as she seems to equate her shaved head and desire to move in queer spaces as being queer. I would have liked for the author to spend more page time on this subject. That then we have the ‘lesbian’ character in love with ‘her’ frustrated me somewhat as she only seems to be mentioned to emphasize ‘her’ desirability and to fuel ‘his’ jealousy. That ‘she’ only shows interest/pursues a relationship with toxic men was a bit tiring. Maybe if the author had spent more time articulating the motivations/feelings that lead ‘her’ to self-sabotage, like Zaina Arafat does in You Exist Too Much, maybe then I would have those relationships more realistic.
There is also a mini-rant against cancel culture and its brevity does it a disservice as the author delivers a rather surface-level and rushed commentary on the dangers of this 'practice'.
SPOILERS
Here comes the cherry on the poorly baked cake. When the climax happens, we are taken out of the novel and into a writing workshop of some sort. The people there are discussing the novel, while the author remains silent. We learn that the novel is based on her experiences and the people who have also just finished it give their various opinions. Many of them are celebrating her achievement and giving her some truly fantastic feedback. The few dissident voices point out all of the book's flaws (the experimental style, the ending, the use of dual perspectives to tell what should have been just ‘her’ story) but it just so happens that said ppl are shitty so their critique is made moot. This supposedly self-aware wannabe meta chapter pissed me off. It seemed a preemptive attempt at rebutting any criticism, and in this way, it reminded me of a certain passage from Mona Awad’s Bunny, where we have awful people give some valid criticism to the narrator’s book which happens to be stylistically and thematically similar to Bunny. I am all for autofiction, and some of my favourite books are inspired by the author’s own experiences (the idiot, you exist too much, caucasia) but here I question the author’s choice to add the pov of the man she was in an abusive relationship with. The people in the workshop argue that this is an empowering move and that she has the right to tell her own story etc etc, and while I don’t necessarily disagree with that, I found the way she chooses to portray him and his inner monologue during ‘his’ chapters to be at best lazy, at worst, of poor taste. The florid metaphors that dominate his pov ultimately amount to a caricature of a man (“her water breasts slipping to the sides of her rib cage like raw eggs”). I couldn’t help but to unfavourably compare this to the jaw-dropping finale episode of I May Destroy You or the section in Wayétu Moore’s memoir where she convincingly captures her mother’s perspective.
I dunno, I felt this last section was smugly self-congratulatory and for no reason tbh. Nothing really stood about this ‘novel’: the structure was uninspired, the prose was mannered, and the characters were flimsy at best. The issues and themes had potential, and as I said, the author does on occasion proffer some keenly observed passages on American and Egyptian social mores, on cultural and linguistic barriers, on occupying a female body in contemporary Cairo, on being 'othered', on the ‘desirability’ of whiteness (for example she notes how in america her mother has recently ‘reinvented’ herself as white), on the privileges that come with being America (by emphasizing the opportunities that are available to ‘her’ and not ‘him’), and on the dangers of self-victimization (with ‘him’ trying to gaslight ‘her’ for his emotionally abusive behaviour by painting himself as a victim).
I’m sure other readers will be able to appreciate this more than I was. Sadly, I was not a fan of the overall tone of the novel nor did I like how the author portrays her story’s only lesbian character. Lastly, that meta chapter pissed me off. I didn’t think it was half as clever as it wanted to be, and it had the same energy as those successful authors who bemoan their book’s few negative reviews on Twitter.
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"There's a danger between us, but I'm not always sure who it belongs to. Which of us needs protection and which of us should be afraid?"
If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is a novel about an abusive relationship, and a novel about power. Its story is unrelenting in its depiction of the push and pull of power, the ways in which its characters are alternately powerful and powerless, at times wielding power and at others being subjected to it. At its heart it's a deeply ambivalent novel, not in the sense that it tries to make gray what is black and white, but rather that it is interested in interrogating the dynamics of those gray areas: how things can seem black one way and then white the next, how you can have power in one moment then be robbed of it in the next.
And this grayness of power is explored in so many ways, all intertwined and complex and hard to disentangle from each other. There is the power of nationality, of class, of gender, of culture. The protagonist comes from an Egyptian background, but she is American: as a foreigner in Egypt, she wields power and status, but because she is a foreigner, lacking the know-how to navigate Egypt, she is very much vulnerable--doubly so because she is a woman.“I tried to tell a taxi driver I wanted to get off on the west side of Zamalek, and it was like he’d never heard of west. No one uses the cardinal points for directions. The Dokki side? he asked and I wasn’t sure, couldn’t say. The maps are all wrong. Where the roads are numbered (rarely), they are not ordered consecutively, and when they are named, no one uses those names. The landmarks are arbitrary—a discontinued post office, a banana-seller. The bridges are referred to by dates. I’ll take the 26th of July to Zamalek and then you point where you want to get off, the driver says politely. It’s as though the city were deliberately designed to resist comprehension and to discipline those who left for daring to return. You have either lived here and you know, or you never have and never will.”
Enter the man the protagonist becomes involved with: an Egyptian, born in a village called Shobrakheit, and now living in Cairo. Unlike the protagonist, he is poor--homeless at one point in the novel--and struggling with a drug addiction. But he also has a kind of power that the protagonist lacks: he is a man, and he knows Cairo well, knows its geography and history and culture in a way that she cannot--and, in many ways, can never--access.
When these two characters come together, these power dynamics come to the fore, and it is just so damn interesting. Just as the American protagonist others the Egyptian man, he also others her in turn. Their relationship is always precarious, balanced on a knife's edge. And the novel is not so much interested in shrugging off responsibility by depicting both parties as equally guilty, but rather in interrogating the very specific ways in which harm is inflicted, and the particular ways in which it manifests.
That being said, I don't want to give the impression that these characters are depicted flatly or stereotypically: the protagonist is more than just The Ignorant Westerner, and the man she is involved with is not just The Poor Egyptian. Those ideas are very much interrogated in the novel, and each character grapples with how they may or may not be seen in that way by the other.“I swear this isn’t who I am. I’m not a violent person, but there is a violence that moves through you like a live current when you hate what someone has made you become. I feel estranged from myself the longer I am with her, made criminal solely because she is afraid, made pathetic because she pities me—a poor boy though I never was.”
And whether about the relationship or not, there are so many insightful and incisive moments in this novel. I highlighted a lot, and found a lot that was both familiar and new to me. Here’s an especially memorable passage,“I resent [my father] because I recognize him. This desperation to refashion ourselves into the most pleasing form makes fools of us both. We’re pliable and capricious, shed our skin at the slightest threat, and ultimately stick out everywhere we go. We were both more convincing Egyptians in New York than we’d ever be on this side of the Atlantic. There I had enough Arabic to flirt with the Halal Guys and the Yemenis at my deli. At school, identity was simple: my name etched in hieroglyphics on a silver cartouche at my throat. I could say, Back home, we do it like this, pat our bread flat and round, never having patted bread flat or otherwise. But here I keep saying I’m Egyptian and no one believes me. I’m the other kind of other, someone come from abroad who could just as easily return there.”
I don't want to give too much away, but this is the kind of novel that works only if you read it from start to finish. What it sets out to do in its beginning it clinches by its end, and honestly, I was really impressed. I was ready to give this novel a 3 stars and move on, under the impression that I understood what kind of novel it was and knew exactly what I didn't like about it--and then it did something I wasn't expecting: it surprised me. And it surprised me in a way that made me reevaluate everything I'd just read.
If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English was a novel that I didn't think I loved, but then it surprised me, challenged me, demanded that I actively be a part of its narrative. And in doing all of that, impressed me. It's one of those rare novels that's interesting in the true sense of the word: filled with the kinds of details and complexities that always draw your interest, even (and especially) if they are not immediately or entirely transparent to you.
Thank you so much to Graywolf Press for sending me a review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review! -
i've been looking for novels on post-revolutionary egypt for quite a while, i read a few in English and Arabic; whatever I can get my hands on. But this? It was a pain from start to finish. If Naga had chosen to focus (with nuance, with sarcasm, with awareness of history and social context) on the character of the American-Egyptian heroine, I would've accepted it. But focusing on the dual povs of an American-Egyptian and an egyptian from the delta governorates gave us not only unreliable narrators, and not it a good way, but hateful characters, without any nuance or critique of their circumstances. Naga portrays an Egypt that is made up of motley contexts that she must've gathered from her parents, a few history books, and some google searches. Naga describes an Egypt with Sudanese servants and slaves that walk dogs in Dokki, boujie christians who despise Muslim women wearing veils (who are sweaty and smelly, jfc, Naga), and streets that she described from Ali Mubarak's Khitat. For Naga, post-revolutionary Egypt is a dark dystopian place of crushed dreams and an arid graveyard of hopes. If you read Ezzeldine Fishere's Kul Haza al-Hira' (كل هذا الهراء) you'll find it is mostly the same, except Fishere gives you a well-rounded portrait of the ups and downs of a post-revolutionary atmosphere. This is not where all the similarities stop; Fishere's novel also tackles a ruinous love story between an American-Egyptian immigrant who returns to Egypt and a lower class Egyptian who come together in Sisi's Egypt. Unlike Fishere, Naga knows nothing of Egypt, of its politics, its social topography, or the entire concept of social classes. Her nameless heroine wants you to know how anti-class she is that she is willing to sleep with a homeless-druggie, yet she exoticises him as a third world fellah, and in turn, Naga portrays him as a despicable, misogynistic, backward Egyptian that has no redeeming quality, that the only way to remove him from the space of the novel is to kill him off. Naga's novel should be called instead "If an Egyptian Cannot Write About Egypt", because, well, that is the case.
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A complicated account of a doomed affair between two complex and aching souls in contemporary Cairo. Experimental in format and perspective, we delve into the very tumultuous concepts of addition, abusive, obsession, and identity, the many shades of gray that influence culture, normalcy, attraction, and power between two places, two points of view, two desires. This novel is layered and personal, dark and honest in its rambles, it’s questions, it’s secrets. If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is a powerful example of the power of narratives, of trauma, of transformation.
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Okaaaaay, this blew my mind. Speechless right now. Holy f*ck. I’ll get back to you.
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This is honestly, one of the hardest reviews I had to write.
If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is a story about an Egyptian American woman (who remains unnamed for most of the book). As an American, who has never really felt American, she struggles with her identity and decides to move to Egypt to connect with her roots, in an attempt to find herself.
Her parents, who do not really approve or understand her decision to move to Egypt, use their connections to find her a decent job as an English teacher, and a nice apartment in Downtown Cairo. However, the Cairo that she was hoping to live in is quite different from the reality. As soon as she opens her mouth, Egyptians ask her where she's really from. She struggles to fit in in fast-paced Cairo, fresh out of two revolutions.
In comes a man from Shobrakheit, a polar opposite to her. The most extreme move he did was from Shobrakheit to Cairo. He's a revolutionary and a photographer, but also a drug addict, who comes from an extremely poor family in the suburbs of Baheira governorate.
The man and the woman meet in a Café in Egypt. He obsessively starts calling her after their meeting. Eventually, she replies and they develop a "romantic" relationship. He was attracted to her being an American, and she was attracted to his authenticity as an Egyptian. Eventually, they resent each other for the exact same thing that drew them to one another.
From the start, their relationship made me extremely uncomfortable. As a reader, this made me reflect: why is it uncomfortable for me? Is it because they come from different worlds? Do people have to be alike to form a long-lasting relationship? Am I uncomfortable because of his personality?
Noor Naga's depiction of Cairo is what mostly took me by surprise. Coming from Cairo, I could immediately tell the author at least lived there when she was writing the book. There wasn't any depiction of the nicer parts of Cairo. If you have never been to Cairo, this book will sadly make sure you never will.
Everything about this book was surprising. The author poses a deep question at the beginning of each chapter. It is told in alternating perspectives, and you have to guess who your protagonist is at the start of each chapter.
This is the kind of book that I couldn't stop thinking (and unfortunately for my friends, talking about) up until I finished it. It is captivating, disturbing, and sometimes horrifyingly true. -
مذكرات تدور أحداثها في وسط البلد بالقاهرة، على غلاف الكتاب مكتوب أنها رواية ولكن بالحوار الأخير تمت الإشارة لها باعتبارها مذكرات شخصية للكاتبة.
تقييم العمل محير بالنسبة لي، لكن استمتعت بقراءة القسم الثاني أكثر عندما بدأت العلاقة بين الشخصيات تتضح.
بدأت الرواية بدون تمهيد أو حتى استطراد وعودة لتوضيح شيء عن الشخصيات وانما تقدمت بالأحداث حتى اعتدنا على الشخصيتين الرئيستين من عالمين مختلفين كليًا إلى أن يجمع بينهما مقهى في وسط البلد..
في الفصول الأولى جاء التنقل بين الشخصيتين بدون توضيح لمن يتحدث وهذا أخذ بعض الوقت لاكتشف أن هناك شخصين مختلفين في طريقهما للقاهرة..
لو كان الفصل عنوانه باسم الشخصية مثلاً كان هذا سيجعل الأمور أوضح.
الأحداث عادية لكن أسلوبها الهادئ في الكتابة به ما جذبني لإكمال القراءة.
حديثها عن مقاهي وسط البلد والعنصرية والطبقية الراسخة في أذهان بعض الطبقات الاجتماعية من رواد تلك الأماكن.
شعرت أن الرواية موجهة أكثر للقارئ الأمريكي خاصة الهوامش التي توضح معاني بعض المصطلحات المصرية والأمثلة الشعبية والمصادر التراثية لبعض الجمل والأمثلة والتي لم أسمع عن كثير منها من قبل فبعض الأساطير التي ذكرتها الكاتبة باعتبارها من التراث الشعبي أو الإسلامي وجدتها غريبة وغير مألوفة
وهناك معلومات الخطأ فيها واضح جدا بشكل مريب فيمكن ببحث بسيط تتأكد الكاتبة من صاحب أغنية واسم كاتب نوبي وأبطال فيلم مصري ما..
ولكن عندما بحثت عن موضوع الهوامش هذا قرأت أن الكاتبة تعمدت اختلاق تلك الهوامش وذكر معلومات خاطئة حتى توصل فكرة جهل الفتاة الأمريكية بالتاريخ المصري والحكايات الشعبية والفن وتصديقها للقصص التي يرويها الفتى من شبراخيت..
وجعلني هذا أحب فكرة الهوامش أكثر وأجدها ذكية..
جاءت النهاية أسرع مما توقعت وشعرت أنه تم اقتصاصها أو أن هناك صفحات مفقودة ولكن في القسم الأخير أثناء نقلش الكاتبة مع بعض الأشخاص حول الرواية تأكدت من انه تم حذف باقي أحداث القسم الثالث وترك نهاية الرواية عند الحادث حسب نصيحة أحد الأشخاص في المتحدثين..
جاءت بعض تفاصيل الجزء المحذوف في حوار الكاتبة مع الفريق..
ومن هذه النهاية دي نشعر أنها مذكرات أو رواية عن علاقة حب سامة بين اثنين وانتهت، لكن القسم الأول والثاني كانت تبدو القصة حول حياة الشخصيتين في القاهرة وعلاقتهم بها من منظورين مختلفين تماما بين أمريكا وشبراخيت.
لو هذه مذكرات وليست رواية فإننا في الفصول اللي يرويها الفتى من شبراخيت، كنا نقرأها حسب رأي الكاتبة في أحداث ليست مطلعة على أغلبها،
ولكن كتبت عنها بلسانه مثل حديثها عن رؤيته لعلاقتهما، ورأيه في مواضيع كثيرة عايشها بعيد عنها وحتى عندما كان يراقبها دون معرفتها.
ولكن بما أن الراوي الوحيد هو الفتاة الأمريكية فنحن مضطرون لسماع صوتها فقط حتى لمشاعره وأفكاره وذكريا��ه، والتي لا يوجد دليل على معرفتها بها إلا بعض ما حكاه لها.
وهذا مع عنوان الرواية يمكن استنتاج غرضه
If An Egyptian cannot speak English.
أرى أنها ان فكرة قوية وتستفز القارئ بشكل إيجابي.
ولكن لم أستطع تقبلها أخلاقيا بشكل تام فلو أن هذه مذكرات حقيقية فهذا الشخص مهما بلغ من السوء غير موجود ليدافع عن نفسه أو يرد على ما رُوي عنه من أفكار وانطباعات وهذا مقارب لفكرة طرحها أحد أشخاص المناقشة الاخيرة.
أحببت النقاش الأخير وفكرة الانتقال من أحداث الرواية إلى ورشة عمل ونقاش أخير حول الآراء قبل نشر الكتاب وكأنه نادي كتاب حول الرواية، طرح به الكثير من الأسئلة التي قد ترد بذهن القارئ،
وان كان ببعض الآراء مبالغة كبيرة حول مدى مأساوية الأحداث المذكورة والتي لم تكن تحتمل هذا الرأي الحماسي لتلك المرأة بالمناقشة.
Tue, Feb 14, 2023 -
Similar to how Bo Burnham makes jokes about being aware of making inappropriate jokes, hoping that the meta awareness works as a defense of continuing to make said jokes, this book hopes that the final meta writing workshop of the book will smooth over its problems. Like "I'm aware and ploughed ahead anyways, therefore it's an intentional choice and you didn't read it appropriately." Le sigh.
The main thing I disliked about this is that the Egyptian characters, even when given a first-person voice, seem to come from the American girl's perspective. For example, when the Shobrakit guy says that the revolution fizzled out because the foreign money dried up, and it left a lot of drug addicts in its wake. Is that really a common belief among lower class participants who actively participated in the revolution, like this character? Later we learn that the American girl is an autofiction of the author and the book is based on her experiences, so I guess that's why the Egyptian characters never really leave an American perspective.
Tbh I read this book to complete a reading challenge but it just strengthens my decision that I need to stop reading 2nd / 3rd gen American immigrant stories for a while. It makes me bitter that the characters often spread a colonialist and privileged American perspective but argue that because they too are damaged by that ideology they could not possibly be an active participant in it. That "hypenated identity" and passport makes you a participant, and simply being aware of it isn't enough to erase culpability. Idk what the answer is here, I just know I need to take a step back for a while. Maybe I shouldn't even read books by American authors for a few months. I'm sick of the discourse. -
wow wow wow this was stunning
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"When the foreigners left, it all went to shit. When it all went to shit, the foreigners left. The sequence hardly matters, the result was the same"
Set against the backdrop of Cairo, post-2011 Egyptian Revolution, an unnamed narrator returned to Cairo from America (known throughout the book as "the American woman"). She met another unnamed narrator (known throughout the book as "the boy from Shobrakheit"), a photographer of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution who is now unemployed and living in a rooftop shack. Both characters developed a romantic, yet dark and violent relationship.
The plot sounds simple enough. But what is remarkable is Noor Naga's attempt to experiment with the form and structure of the novel. The story is told in 3 parts: Part 1 consists of the POVs of both characters which open with a series of philosophical questions which relate to the content of each POVs (for instance: "If you are competing to lose, what do you win if you win?"; "What if male arousal is only a gasp misplaced in the body?"); In Part 2, the questions were stripped off but long footnotes were inserted to introduce the Egyptian culture, language, and slang; Part 3, consisting of dialogues, is where readers got to know the name of the "American woman" and discovered that Parts 1 and 2 consist of the memoir of the "American woman". The dialogues in Part 3 took place in a writing class where the ending of the memoir was read out by the "American woman" and the students were giving feedback on the said memoir. Part 3 is definitely impactful, metafictional, and inventive! The other highlight of this novel would be Naga's ability to create 2 very distinct voices and characterizations: through the "American woman" Naga explored issues such as identity, cultural roots, classism, and discrimination against females in Cairo; through the "boy from Shobrakheit", Naga explored the aftermath of the revolution, toxic masculinity, male egoism, machismo, poverty. The power dynamics, abuse, and violence between the 2 characters were delicately fleshed out by Naga, amidst the inventive form. Observations on the failure of the Revolution and aftermath of colonialism were on point: "In 2011, we really believed we were birthing a new order, that everything would change and the corruption that had seeped through the veins of the nation, poisoning every organ, would be flushed out at last...Six years later, it's embarrassing to remember just how innocent we were - not naive so much as innocent"; "We thought we were toppling a regime, but the whole world was involved"; "Those outside of a language, of a culture, see furniture through a window and believe it is a room. But those inside know there are infinite rooms just out of view, and that they can always be more deeply inside". A very impressive debut and as a huge fan of fiction that experiments with form and structure, this is a 5/5 star read to me! Glad that this made it to the shortlist for the 2022 Giller Prize! -
In recent memory I cannot recall a book that vacillated between exceptional and disappointing. Unfortunately, for me, it ended on the later; with a strange metatextual writer’s group critiquing the piece. I always dislike this because it feels it should be tongue-in-cheek statements about some of the stylistic and distinguishing choices, but actually ends up just pointing out some legitimate flaws. It always ends up being more of a detractor than a foil to make things blatant to the reader—but that is just me.
However, it does have some soaring sights. Certain sections are wildly, keenly well-observed. The macro dynamics of the character arcs work well, I think—though, as short as it is, seems dragged out, at points. Profound to almost inane, back and forth. Safe to say I only really understood a portion of the author was intending. Though it could be that sour taste in my mouth from the ending, especially. -
I feel like the only reason I finished this book was because I listened to the audiobook. Weird book, had very strong Mohsin Hamid vibes and an extremely obnoxious ending.
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"If an Egyptian cannot speak English, who is telling his story?"
To me, this book just kept getting better and better and I only put it down once because I only picked it up once. This book possesses a beauty and scope of themes and prose. This is a must-read on this year's Giller Prize Shortlist.
"To remind us all that good things can come from our grimmest hour. That if we face our traumas and trust in the healing power of the narrative, we can produce work that is valuable."
Noor Naga has written a scathing tale of love, within the modern paradigm of identity politics and diasporic themes. The story of an American Girl and enjoy from Shobrakheit unfolds through alternating perspectives from both lovers. She has returned to her family's birth country of Egypt where she meets a revolutionary photographer who has lost his way since the Arab Spring. I am a sucker for alternating narratives and toxic tales of love.
"I missed it entirely. Watched the revolution on television from the comfort of my home on the Upper West Side, a French bulldog on my lap. How convenient, then, when all is said and done, to arrive in the reckless aftermath, claiming, Me too, I'm one of you. I'm too late returning and he knows it."
I had a very visceral reaction to Noor Naga's book that is philosophical at parts, political and personal at others, mixing in themes of gender roles and relationship dynamics, trauma and grieving. Noor Naga captures so many themes in under 200 pages that would make this a great selection for a book club. This was the first book of the Giller Longlist that I read and I still think about it regularly over a month later. If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English is relevant, beautiful, tragic, deeply honest that cuts like a dagger.
"Truly the most depressing kind of relationship is one where the blood runs in both directions and it's unclear who is to blame."
"Those outside of a language, of a culture, see furniture through a window and believe it is a room. But those inside know there are infinite rooms just out of view, and that they can always be more deeply inside."
"You can't just discard willy-nilly things that once belonged to you, even if you've outgrown them. You have to be careful. Some things, I say my grandmother used to say, are holy." -
This novel does something really weird at the end... And I think I love it, but I might hate it.
Will do a full review on YouTube in good time. Link here -
https://youtu.be/DZKbuy_CUIw -
Noor Naga's If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English purports to tell the story of two people, The 'American girl' and the 'Boy from Shobrakheit', who meet at a cafe in Cairo and shortly after begin seeing one another. Basically, disillusioned millennial girl returns to her roots. Therefore, at first glance, its landscape is familiar; we know these characters and we hate them. The New Yorker girl with Egyptian origins who decides life in Egypt would be rosier than America and moves to Cairo, shaved head and all. On arrival, it's an immediate culture shock; from questions regarding her origin at the border to the sexism she perceives, this does not feel like the diasporic fantasy land she expected, and it never gets better. While the boy, a photographer, is said to have moved to the city from a small town following his grandma's death and was actively involved in documenting the events of the Arab spring.
Naga's prose is the star of the novel, sharp and loaded; the language sings right off the page. It utilises form and structure in ways that though not particularly new, provide a dynamic telling. We get unnamed characters, no quotation marks, footnotes, a three-part division and told from the POV of both characters, sometimes unsure of which is speaking. Each new chapter begins with a question it tries to tackle in the content.
The time is post-Arab spring revolution, but if you were expecting realistic insight into what life is like in Egypt post-2011, then I suggest you kill those ideas. Naga's Cairo is a skewed vision. Dirty, ugly and full of danger at every turn, never mind the smear of Western interference, drug addiction and hopelessness. Right down to the craven fantasies of staging an abduction from potential rapists to enable a man to swoop in to save the day. Fairly certain many will take umbrage with this depiction, especially of the 'Boy from Shobrakheit' and the reliance on negative stereotypes of people from the countryside and arab men are misogynistic tropes, among other things.
However, it's also smart. It tries in rambling, pseudo-philosophical - 'thoughts?' approach to explore beyond binary considerations of power, who wields it and against who in different contexts, from class to national identity and gender. Who’s story is this, who is doing the telling, from what lens, who grants access, who is silenced as opposed to voiceless, and who controls the narrative?
The diasporic girl has economic power and that of nationality, class and sexual identity, which she wields in multiple contexts. The boy has power on account of his gender and culture - but does he truly have this? There are also probings re identity, otherness, belonging and the diasporic experience, but those are of little interest to me.
The content is uncomfortable, love gone wrong, abuse, addiction, obsession, poverty and even death. In the final part, we are taken out of the novel into some other context, unravelling this story we have come to know. This new knowledge adjusts our vision but also implicates the reader. And while I loved the style and prose, it's a novel I left with the question, does being self-aware of a problem negate harm done in its depiction? I think there will be many people inclined to disagree. -
idk how y’all 1-2 star review girlies are reading part 3 and then coming on this app to sound EXACTLY like the reading circle characters like it must be so embarrassing for y’all to just walk around like that truly
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damn. rtc.
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needed a min to recollect my feelings on this... Noor Naga writes with a lyrical voice of an other, an other in their own homeland. loved that polarization because.. cmon. this is MY BRAND.
the relationship between the protagonists was doomed from the start by issues outside of their romance, and these factors were portrayed well. it was narrated through a confrontational method that elicited raised brows. the characters have an open and inquisitive conversation with the reader about all taboos; race, sex, abuse, love, language, HAIR!!! she transmitted that culture well and the footnotes were a nice touch.
back to the protags. they both needed to belong and were ambiguously lost in a deteriorating metropolis post a life-shattering national revolution. almost in a Hegelian sense, they found a bit of solace within each other despite the linguistic distance, her tongue too foreign, his too loose. I feel that their relationship was toxic and was a bit of a cliché because of the Egyptian/religious upbringing. but they’re complete opposites and it’s so intriguing how they got together in the first place.
the book was a series of vignettes about modernized Cairo through two foreigners’ eyes, one who saw the modernity of NYC, the other of a village of Shobrakheit. it’s like Cairo people are dealing with this modernity as cognitive dissonance, especially during a time of looking up post the revolution (or looking down for Him). The abuse seemed to entail a natural cause-effect of the revolution's violence? or perhaps His extremely conservative upbringing was his main excuse.
I approve of the political aspect, and despite those characters being really emotionally damaged, they were very well-rounded and gained my affection. I read this because I’m homesick and I’m glad I experienced this book before I think of “returning” :-) -
noor naga writes in a way that does justice to the complexity of feeling. her sentences manage to describe visceral experiences without prescribing simplistic names to them. she dips into the difficult textures of class difference and struggle in egyptian society, by focusing on detailed social frictions between the characters. noor delves into a (very specific but all too common) form of arab-americanized diasporic consciousness, adding more depth to novelist engagements with arab 'insider-outsider' dynamics, imposter anxiety, dissociation, and unresolved tensions within the self. her writing style has a refreshing concision to it, and an uncomfortable vulgarity that makes the reader contemplate where the ugliness resonates with them.
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لمتحدثي العربية، هنا حوار بالعربية مع نور نجا
https://anchor.fm/ahmed-naji/episodes... -
Stunning!!!
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2.5*
before getting into my review, it needs to be said that i am not egyptian and my knowledge about the country’s history and the nuances involved in the Arab Spring is limited, therefore i am not speaking out of a place of expertise and there are many people better suited for that than me.
as far as the things that i loved go, this is a unique and captivating story and shows a clear mastery of the english language. the book is short and, while i cannot say that i had an enjoyable reading experience, i was drawn in from the first page.
i also felt a deep sense of attachment to the story. as an iranian, i know what it’s like to have a country be ravaged by a revolution and i know what it’s like to watch your people fight for freedom from across the ocean. guilt, pride, and sadness becoming one in the pit of your stomach. this was a story that, in many ways, needed to be shared.
i simply wish it had been shared in a better way. the novel has two povs and is split into three parts. i have seen many people point out that it is very difficult to tell which person’s pov you are reading from at times and if i had not been listening to the audiobook with a different narrator for each, i would have had the same issue because there is essentially no other hint to distinguish the two.
the first part of the novel starts each pov with these questions that are thrown into the void (“Question: If the beast is already in your house, does that make the wilderness safer?”). no answer is given because there is no one true answer to it. this could have been a very interesting and thought-provoking concept that could have helped achieve more nuance and depth for the story and the characters. instead, it often felt like aimless questions that served no other purpose than to make the book - and the author by relation - seem more philosophical and intellectual than it actually was. questions and snippets from the book relied on the use of metaphors to relay the message in a poetic manner but it often fell flat and i was left wondering what emotion that had meant to evoke?
the second part arose a deep frustration in me because of the woman’s perspective. the novel makes it very clear that this is a relationship between two toxic people in which the man is especially abusive and misogynistic amongst other things. my problem did not lie there, however, because that was the point of the story. my problem lies in the fact that i could not tell how much of the girl’s personality was done on purpose or out of ignorance? she was privileged, yes. but she was also deeply ignorant and just straight up problematic. fully admitting to her fake-woke attitude and her history of playing into her racial ambiguity by identifying with black and latina culture without actually being a part of it. she talks - in a single paragraph or two - about being cancelled for cultural appropriation and about portraying herself as a member of the lgbtq community and going to gay bars and it is never adressed as being as terrible as it is. while i acknowledge that that may not have been the author’s intention, there’s no denying that it comes off incredibly ignorant and self-centered. there is no depth added to the characters and i am just given information about them so that i can know more about them without ever truly being given the chance to understand why they are the way that they are.
the third part annoyed me the most. this segment completely breaks the fourth wall of the story by showing the author in a group session discussing her book with other writers. you have no idea if this segment is fiction or autobiographical, leaving you to wonder how much of the novel itself is fiction. i’ve seen other people review this as being very clever but i just found it annoying. it completely takes you out of the headspace and setting of these characters. the ending of part two would have been much more impactful had it ended there. my problem with this part was also that i am literally being shown the authors in this group bring up this book’s valid issues that are never corrected. am i supposed to feel better that this author is self-aware of them and chose to keep things the way they were regardless? she had outside perspectives telling her that it was hard to distinguish between the two povs and whether this third part was fiction or not, it is clear that the author was aware of this issue and chose not to fix it which is so frustrating.
all in all, i think this author took an important message and story and ruined it by giving me empty metaphors and undeveloped, insufferable characters. -
A compelling hybrid work - fiction/autofiction, memoir, autobiography, who knows - told in three parts. The main characters who tell their stories are an American woman of Egyptian heritage, with shaved head, who has tried on various POC identities, in Cairo for the first time, six or so years after the Arab Spring, a "return" to a home she's never been, and does not fit in, and the poor young man from a rural village, who once made good money selling his photographs of the revolution to first-world media, but now the revolution has resulted in nothing, and worse, and he's been a drug addict for quite a long time. Interesting koans of questions head the first section, footnotes the second, in the third highly meta section, a writing group is analyzing the third section of the book, where a few more details are provided about the story between the American woman and the Egyptian man. There is much to dissect and analyze here, otherness, identity, homelands, language, relationships, violence, and more, and yet that third section seems also to contain the view that anyone who is non-Arab should not have the temerity to opine on the book, which is a little bit off-putting.
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I feel like I’ve never read a book quite like this in terms of writing style. The first two parts are a back and forth between two unnamed lovers, one who’s American born Egyptian and the other who’s from an Egyptian village Shobrakheit and moves to Cairo to photograph the revolution. I can see how some of the decisions/question and answer style could come across heavy handed, but I really enjoyed the writing.
The story explores a lot of expat (?) guilt and partner abuse in a really explicit way that doesn’t really get into the ethics of either, but rather just lays out both people’s experiences … I felt like this came across really vulnerable and personal to me but I can also see it feeling incomplete. -
This was fresh and interesting… a sort of twisted modern cultural love story in which I loved the female lead’s point of view and understood the significance of the male lead’s pov but didn’t resonate as much with some of his moments. Naga’s writing is beautiful though and absolutely packed with history and reference and life. I love the direction that the fiction world is going in right now!
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Intense, thought-provoking, moving, heartbreaking and dynamic, .... It has been one of the best works I have read (listened to) in a long time.
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5 out of 5 stars. 🌻 An experimental novel about an Egyptian-American woman who moves to Cairo. There, she meets a man and begins a relationship with him. The novel is told from their alternating perspectives. It includes discussions on fetishizing the "other" and abusive relationships from different angles.
This book was so confusing in the beginning, but it was ultimately worth it. The experimental formatting was so, so interesting, and added a layer of commentary to the central question: "If an Egyptian cannot speak English, who is telling his story?" Recently, I've been thinking about writing that suggests but doesn't dictate, and this book definitely does that. -
I wasn’t a fan of the way this book is written. No doubt the Giller jury considers it a great experimentation in style, but I found the footnotes distracting and I’m never impressed when a creative work starts referring to itself.
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So a millennial from Al Buhayrah is a vulgar, indecent and uneducated person who cannot speak English and does "bodra"?
As a millennial from Al Buhayrah, I think the writer needs to familiarise herself with how people are living there before writing this shit. This novel is purely a series of offenses and exaggeration.
The language felt non-idiomatic as if she was translating an Arabic text into English. Sounded like a literal translation most of the time!
What made me laugh out loud is how she forced the story of the woman who couldn't see the Ka'ba into the novel by saying that it was a sheikh from Shubrakheet who told her that she put "work"-lol- in the mouth of a corpse. dude, please do yourself a favor and make up your own stories because this one has been everywhere, and what you did here is ridiculous.
كله بقى كوم و"أحوى" في النسخة الصوتية كوم تاني
يعني انت كدة بتبين إنك بتتكلم عربي لما تجوّد على حرف الهاء تنطقه حاء؟
أنا فضلت فترة أبحث في قاموسي العربي والإنجليزي إيه ممكن تكون الكلمة دي لحد ما أدركت إن -جيس وااااات- أحوى is actually قهوة lol
This is a novel written and read by Egyptians about Egyptians, but obviously for non-Egyptians who know nothing about Egypt. أو "سكان إيجيبت" الحقيقة ممكن برضه اللي شايفين الأقاليم inferiors.
محاولات الكاتبة لانتقاد الطبقية الحقيقة لم يسفر عنها إلا إبراز إنها نفسها طبقية (لا أزعم إنها كذلك لكن النص دة نص طبقي وغير مدروس لم يتحقق الكاتب مما يكتب حتى!) -
This book left my stomach turning. It made me uncomfortable. Was that the intention… idk. At 30% I was sure I would rate this a five star for the vibes but it took a violent and nauseating turn. The writing was good the story was executed well.. if different. Now.. I’m wondering if I should give it a four bc it was GOOD or a three bc I would never recommend it to anyone 😭😭
part 1 starts each chapter with a question. It gives the impression that this will be a meandering philosophical novel. With two unnamed main narrators whose paths cross in Cairo for very different reasons- our American girl here to presumably reconnect with her roots, although her family cannot begin to fathom why, and the boy from Shobrakheet, a survivor of the revolution and a (former) photographer who struggles with addiction but decides to (or is he forced to) go cold turkey.
part 2 starts each chapter with what is essentially a thesis statement- the philosophy and question-asking are gone. The book is now as serious as the violence it recounts the tale of.
Part 3 breaks the fourth wall and allowing the author to occupy the spaces of artist and critic all at once. It begs the question is this a memoir or a novel, a fictionalized account of true events or really just a figment of her imagination. All of that adds to the unsettling effect of the work. I’m still reeling.
