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Synopsis
First published fifteen years ago, The Arabi an Nightmare has been translated into fifteen languages, and has been compared favourably to the best intellectual world fiction. '
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tour de Force,
By Tinfoilhat (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Arabian Nightmare (Paperback)
A book set in the Cairo of hundreds of years ago. The tale of a young English Pilgrim whose caravan travels through Cairo on the way to Jerusalem. Immediately he arrives in the city he is assailed by a form of insomnia which seems to give way to periods of narcoleptic unconsciousness in which his nightmares assume a vivid and tangible reality. These become progressively more disorientating, engulfing and traumatic - and whatever the condition causing them, it is clearly worsening. He has the Arabian Nightmare - a condition which gradually drives a man from his mind and inverts his real and imagined selves. As it becomes increasingly difficult for him to distinguish dream from waking state, the events unfolding in each start to impact and influence those in the other. For the reader, the confusion experienced by the protagonist is masterfully conveyed by the fact that the story is told by several different narrators in turn. Despite all this, the book is not tiresome in the way that so many 'clever clever' books are ("Sound and the Fury" anyone? "Ulysses"?). Here you will be borne along by a pantheon of rich and varied characters: sinister arab mages, assassins, talking monkeys, David Lynch-esque dwarves, beautiful but deadly prostitutes, a dissipated mogul and his bored, prosmiscuous daughters; and many more. Also, the settings are vivid and pungent and fascinating. Many are in the heads of the characters. The description of the caravanserai and the surrounding precincts of old Cairo, with their stench, over-crowding, disease and darkness, is claustrophobic and menacing. Yet, it is preferable to remain within their sweaty labrynthine warrens than to stray into the hinterland surrounding the great city, where this world and some other seem to merge... Robert Irwin possesses - it seems to me - that rarest combination of qualities: a powerful intellect AND a gift for vivid and original storytelling which engages the reader viscerally. His works deserve far greater recognition than I think they have. He is certainly to be preferred to those "Pseuds' Corner" staples Salman Rushdie and Umberto Eco. With Irwin you will find Eco's intellectual muscle in full measure, but also a tremendous capacity for weaving a compelling and enthralling story. Read this.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A book to help you through a sleepless night...,
By mjc@howlingmonkey.co.uk (Howling Monkey) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Arabian Nightmare (Paperback)
I was first attracted to this book by the references in the foreword to Calvino, Borges and the like - all writers for whom I have great respect. This book carries on that fine tradition of literary playfulness, monkeying around with the conventions of narrative and storytelling with an ease which is at once charming and breathtaking. Where this book really triumphs is in conveying the atmosphere of old Cairo - a city of mystery, dry sweat and moonlit deceit. The hero is a man lost to insomnia, condemned through the midnight hours to wander the narrow streets of a city in which he is a stranger, a city filled with fear and fictions in equal measure. The book is a tale of stories within stories, dreams within dreams - it has all the shiftless confusion of an uncertain nightmare combined with the easy grace of a child's fairytale. Irwin handles his storytelling with a deftness that always leaves the reader guessing - we echo the hero's wide-eyed wonder as we are led through a fantastical dreamscape of shifting stories which are funny and disturbing in equal measure. An excellent book which I would wholeheartedly recommend to any lovers of fiction. A book to keep you company through a sleepless night or two...
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful atmospheric novel,
By Jezza (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Arabian Nightmare (Paperback)
Beautiful atmospheric book - very evocative, like a lost book of the Arabian nights but with the odd modern anachronistic twist. The characters are a bit flat but the descriptions of the city make up for it. The knowledge that Irwin is actually a scholar of classical arabic and middle eastern history is comforting - where this verges on pastiche (as in some of the more complex story-within-a-story-within-a-story) sequence you know it's both authentic and knowing. I look forward to reading more of his fiction and perhaps the non-fiction too.
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