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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tour de Force, 1 May 2002
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.
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