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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Modern Arabic Epic Novel, 19 Aug 2007
This novel was published in Arabic in 1984 and in English in 1987. It's only the first section of a five-book Arabic-language work that totals some 2,500 pages, covers seven decades and is said to be the longest novel in modern Arabic literature. The second and third sections have been published separately as The Trench and Variations on Night and Day. It appears that the fourth and fifth sections haven't been published yet in English.
This first book covers the period roughly from the 1930s to 1950s. It begins with the pious, poor inhabitants of an oasis in the desert whose peace and social harmony are disrupted by the discovery of oil by American researchers who've been invited into the country. Six hundred pages later, it ends following a mass strike over injustice in the coastal city that's grown up around the pipeline to the interior. In between, it shows the impact of modernization brought about by the development of oil, from the locals' point of view. And the resentment caused by the presence of non-Muslims, the increasing materialism and loss of spiritual and communal values, and a backward, paternalistic local government that ignores the attendant social problems.
The technologically superior Americans, despite their practical competence and good intentions, are depicted in this book ultimately as the real villains, because of their foreignness, utter lack of understanding of the inhabitants' world, and the negative effects of the modernization they've set in motion.
A recurring pattern in the novel is that none of the parties involved comprehend the factors behind events that bind them together, and none make an effort to understand the other. (One individual who's something of an exception disappears into the desert early in the novel.) For the most part, the locals don't grasp the significance of what the Americans are doing. The latter make no effort to comprehend the locals and their motivations or actions, unless they perceive a threat to the benefits of oil. And the local ruler spends much of his time away from both in his newly constructed palace, dazzled with the workings of imports like the telescope, stethoscope, radio, automobile and telephone.
The author, who was also an oil economist and political activist, is considered a pioneer of writing that reflected social, economic and political developments in the modern Arab world. A member/associate of the socialist, pan-Arab nationalist Ba'ath Party off and on until the early 1980s, he wrote partly to counter official history, which he believed up to that point had served mainly the interests of the West and the ruling governments and ignored ordinary people's experience.
He based a number of occurrences in the novel on real events in Saudi Arabia, although the country in his novel goes unnamed. There are differences from actual history, though: the local ruler in the book is depicted as a buffoon rather than a strong, independent leader in his own right. And there's nothing in the book like the fundamentalist movement that gained power with the state and rising oil revenues, as did the Wahhabis.
I think this book's important for showing a widespread point of view in the Arab world concerning relations with the West and the impact of the oil economy on local values. Tragically, this view is characterized mainly by a sense of victimization and religious profanation. In those respects this book, written a quarter-century ago, can be regarded as sounding prophetic themes. Yet the author was committed to socialism, and from this novel alone it doesn't appear that he viewed radicalized religion as the solution.
I wasn't enchanted by the style, which was deliberate in pacing, with lengthy narrations and digressions, said to be influenced by traditional oral storytelling modes, and with an ending full of magic realist visions. Or by the characters, many of whom were stand-ins for various pieties and evils. And I found it difficult to believe the depiction of the paradise on earth that was the oasis before the discovery of oil. In some ways, for example its black-or-white morality and the lack of depth to its character-symbols, this novel reminded me of Soviet proletarian works from the 1930s, with a difference being that its model society seemed placed in the romanticized past rather than the future. How the author reconciled this idealization of the past with his own socialist commitment is maybe something that becomes clear in the later installments of this work.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterpiece, 5 Nov 2008
You're unlikely to pick this book up by accident- it's as important now as it ever was- believe all of the good reviews! I read this as an accompanyment to Power by Daniel Yergin, it provided a rare anthropological view of the emerging Gulf oil states written from the perspective of those enjoining modernity. Excellent.
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