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Wedding Nigh
In a small town in the Nile Delta lives Houda the deaf and mute butcher’s apprentice. Revealing the town’s private stories through public sign language, Houda articulates the unspoken and the forbidden, to unsettle the apparent quietude of rural society. But his own unrestrained desire threatens to scandalize the town and rock its codes of public behavior.
When it is reported that he has violated the sanctity of his employer’s own house, the whole town, with the butcher and Shaykh Saadoun, the pretending Sufi, in the lead, rises to avenge itself and publicly humiliate and ridicule Houda. The elaborate ruse planned by the butcher and the shaykh, playing on Houda’ s hopes, dreams, and fantasies, is foolproof―but while Houda may be a dreamer, he is certainly no fool.
This original, satiric novel, introducing the reader to every public and private corner in the life of a small town, is both a daring critique of contemporary Egyptian reality and a thoroughly good read, a remarkable novel of sustained carnivalesque suspense and wicked black humor that marks the arrival of a true literary talent.
When it is reported that he has violated the sanctity of his employer’s own house, the whole town, with the butcher and Shaykh Saadoun, the pretending Sufi, in the lead, rises to avenge itself and publicly humiliate and ridicule Houda. The elaborate ruse planned by the butcher and the shaykh, playing on Houda’ s hopes, dreams, and fantasies, is foolproof―but while Houda may be a dreamer, he is certainly no fool.
This original, satiric novel, introducing the reader to every public and private corner in the life of a small town, is both a daring critique of contemporary Egyptian reality and a thoroughly good read, a remarkable novel of sustained carnivalesque suspense and wicked black humor that marks the arrival of a true literary talent.
144 pages, Hardcover
First published November 29, 2006
19 people want to read
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January 2, 2015
Not a review. Just a few jumbled thoughts. I read 2 novellas yesterday in the New Year and Wedding Night by the Egyptian novelist, Yusuf Abu Rayya, was one of these. The cover is beautiful and definitely possessed the right seduction techniques in wooing me over. The story fitted my deeply personal taste for the broader context of colourful storytelling set in the Middle-East.
Here was a rural township on the Nile Delta, played about amorously by a few choice characters comprising tenants, landlords, shopkeepers, gossipy women and also your regular butcher, barber, tailor, fishmonger and the like. I love stories that revolve around clumsy or even crafty everyday characters & the erractic, jagged and clandestine relationships they often choose to nurture, with disappointing or terrible results. And all this with a strong nostalgic bent or one depicting a fading era.
A butcher's apprentice, Houda, a mute, cannot leave the beautiful ladies alone, some who are maidens and others, mistresses. One day, the butcher, Maallim, finds out that Houda has molested his mistress by grabbing at a visible voluptous breast. He decides to make his assistant pay, not with violence but using public humiliation. The butcher draws up a well-elaborate plan that leaves even the reader in the dark for a long while and entails the cooperation of those who live on the street. Houda has no idea what's in store, although everyone else does. The darkly comic tale is gripping and amusing. To say anymore would be to give away the tight plot.
Yusuf Abu Rayya is able to effortlessly tug at a reader's heartstrings, excellently winding both humour and compassion by turns. He is gentle with his characters, whether they be villian or hero, for each is given the emotional space with which to justify their essential space in his fiction. Wedding Night is deeply poignant and the characters linger long after you've put the novel down.
Here was a rural township on the Nile Delta, played about amorously by a few choice characters comprising tenants, landlords, shopkeepers, gossipy women and also your regular butcher, barber, tailor, fishmonger and the like. I love stories that revolve around clumsy or even crafty everyday characters & the erractic, jagged and clandestine relationships they often choose to nurture, with disappointing or terrible results. And all this with a strong nostalgic bent or one depicting a fading era.
A butcher's apprentice, Houda, a mute, cannot leave the beautiful ladies alone, some who are maidens and others, mistresses. One day, the butcher, Maallim, finds out that Houda has molested his mistress by grabbing at a visible voluptous breast. He decides to make his assistant pay, not with violence but using public humiliation. The butcher draws up a well-elaborate plan that leaves even the reader in the dark for a long while and entails the cooperation of those who live on the street. Houda has no idea what's in store, although everyone else does. The darkly comic tale is gripping and amusing. To say anymore would be to give away the tight plot.
Yusuf Abu Rayya is able to effortlessly tug at a reader's heartstrings, excellently winding both humour and compassion by turns. He is gentle with his characters, whether they be villian or hero, for each is given the emotional space with which to justify their essential space in his fiction. Wedding Night is deeply poignant and the characters linger long after you've put the novel down.
Displaying 1 of 1 review