- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Faber and Faber (16 April 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0571251110
- ISBN-13: 978-0571251117
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.6 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,127,058 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
The setting of The Picnic at Sakkara, a delightful comedy, is Egypt in the days of King Farouk. Edgar Perry, a lecturer at Cairo University, finds himself in a world on all sides less well-ordered than himself. His own wife deceives herself, it not him; his illustrious private pupil, Tureiya Pasha, encourages him to believe in something like a mirage; his students, in the intervals of hearing from him about the beauties of George Eliot, take part in violent political demonstrations; and one of them, Muawiya Khaslat, an attractive rogue hardly able to reconcile his devotion to Perry with his membership of the Moslem Brotherhood, almost turns the picnic into a tragedy.
Newby's Egypt is more than credible and wholly entertaining.
'The light but intelligent novel is always a rare and attractive bird. Such a novel is The Picnic at Sakkara - a book that combines gaiety and shrewdness, a sense of fun and a sense of drama, that treats an important and absorbing subject in a light-hearted and light-handed way.' Daily Mail
'His most successful novel.' Times
About the Author
P. H. Newby (1918-1997) was an English novelist and broadcasting administrator. His first novel, A Journey into the Interior, was published in l946. He was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1948, and he was the first winner of the Booker (now Man Booker) Prize - his novel Something to Answer For received the inaugural award in 1969.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A journey back to pre-Suez Egypt, amidst simmering Nationalist resentment as experienced by a somewhat naive ex-pat academic and an unconfident, yet strangely manipulative wife. A clever, understated political novel, late 'forties/early 'fifties genre, quietly ironic, with an underlying theme of things not being as they appear. The story resonates and would translate into contempory cinema - fine observation in the style of 'The English Patient'.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
No picnic
4 Nov 2007
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
P.H. Newby was an author and director of the BBC. He spent the war years in Cairo and penned this little novel sometime after (pub 1955). It's occasionally entertaining, has a good feel for some of the political and social confusion of Egypt at the time, and strives to be more than it is. The story is disjointed and wandering at times, not really a comedy, which is how the dustjacket describes it. The characters' emotional states don't ring true from moment to moment.
I got the book for research so it was useful in some of its details. As entertainment, it's dull going except when the author strikes the rare authentic note. The title choice is odd. An incident takes place during the eponymous picnic that is important to the ending of the story but the actual picnic is given no more weight than other events that seem to have no particular importance.
I got the book for research so it was useful in some of its details. As entertainment, it's dull going except when the author strikes the rare authentic note. The title choice is odd. An incident takes place during the eponymous picnic that is important to the ending of the story but the actual picnic is given no more weight than other events that seem to have no particular importance.
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