Reading the 20th Century discussion

Welcome to our May Mod Read The Night of the Mi'raj , also published as Finding Nouf the first, in a trilogy of crime novels featuring Nayir Sharqi and Katya Hijazi, set in Saudi Arabia.

Palestinian born desert guide, Nayir, is an outsider, who lives by a strict religious, and moral, code. When the sixteen year old sister of his friend disappears, he is involved in the search and, when she is found dead, he feels compelled to investigate. This investigation brings him into contact with Katya Hijazi, a forensic scientist, and the search for answers will bring him to question everything he believes to be right.

A really interesting, and unusual, setting, makes this mystery a compelling read. Currently 99p on kindle, if you want to join in.

I am about halfway through re-reading this, but I've read it a couple of times now, and it is a fave mystery of mine. Who else is reading this, or thinking of doing so? It is still 99p on kindle in the UK, if anyone is thinking of getting a copy.

I've bought it on Kindle at that bargain price, but haven't made a start on it yet. I've just finished another mystery, so will get to this one soon.

Good to hear, Judy.

I will be reading this, haven't made a start yet, maybe at the weekend.

I bought the Kindle version, and will read it next, so I can follow the discussion.

I will be reading it, but I have got behind in my reading lately

Me too, Jill!

It was available on my library's Overdrive system, and finished a couple of days ago. I really liked this one, will be so glad when a few others have finished it and we can discuss.

Good to hear, Elizabeth.

Have finished my re-read of this now. Really enjoyed this, so looking forward to discussing it too.

I am around half-way through, and finding it very interesting.

Just making a start on this one - it already feels like an interesting juxtaposition with Palace Walk.

Roman Clodia wrote: "Just making a start on this one - it already feels like an interesting juxtaposition with Palace Walk."

I'm sorry I wasn't able to fit in Palace Walk at this time.

Yes, it's so character-driven that it sounds just up your street (or, er, Walk) :)

Roman Clodia wrote: "Yes, it's so character-driven that it sounds just up your street (or, er, Walk) :)"

It was your comment in another thread about feeling 19th Centuryish that has me bumping it up for early June. I am now looking forward to it in a way that I had not before, despite having a physical copy leering at me for ignoring it.

Back to the current read. This was more interesting than I'd given credit. It is not a feminist novel in the way I usually think of feminist novels.

I've started this one, but haven't got very far as yet. The beginning has me hooked, though.

Yes, it has an excellent beginning.

I have never read the second in the series and I am thinking that I really must get to it this time, while the characters are fresh in my mind.

I think the author really portrayed the heat well, too. I have never been to Saudi, although I know people who have lived/live there (has anyone else?) but I have been to the UAE many times and that heat just hits you. Even the bus stops are enclosed and air conditioned.

Susan wrote: "I think the author really portrayed the heat well, too. "

Yes. I lived in Las Vegas for 3 years more than 50 years ago. As it's been awhile and I was young, that heat is not so easy to recall, but it was hot, and I do recall remarking at midnight one night that it had "cooled" to 80. My daughter and grandchildren live in Phoenix. The day the older granddaughter graduated from high school it was 110. There is nothing you can do but endure it.

About 70 pages in and I'm really hoping the death isn't as transparent as it seems at the moment...

Also I'm confused as I thought Saudi women were only granted the right to drive a couple of years ago? So how does 16 year old Nouf drive a truck large enough to hold a camel off the compound alone?

Roman Clodia wrote: "Also I'm confused as I thought Saudi women were only granted the right to drive a couple of years ago? So how does 16 year old Nouf drive a truck large enough to hold a camel off the compound alone?"

All part of contributing to the mystery. And I'll add that the mystery is very well done, though some parts are more transparent than others.

You are correct that women were only granted the right to drive, only fairly recently. However, it is all explained, so I won't spoil it. I do think this book is more about the characters, and setting, than the actual crime.

Elizabeth, I think you are right - the heat is to be endured.

Susan wrote: "I do think this book is more about the characters, and setting, than the actual crime."

That, and the culture, which I thought was very well done. I didn't feel as if I were being hit over the head with it even while it was ever present.

Yes, and written with understanding and sympathy, I felt. I felt for Nayir's predicament, while also sympathising with Katya, and Nouf.

The author was married to a Saudi and lived in Saudi Arabia for a number of years. That she divorced and now lives in the US and yet writes with such sympathy is to her credit.

Susan wrote: "You are correct that women were only granted the right to drive, only fairly recently. However, it is all explained, so I won't spoil it. I do think this book is more about the characters, and sett..."

Ah, thanks, both - I shall be patient then! I just thought that Nayir or Orthan might have commented on/questioned this when it's first mentioned.

She obviously has a warmer memory towards the Kingdom than Hilary Mantel did. She was obviously not a fan, judging by her novel based on the experience, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street

Oh dear, I had a completely different and far more negative response to this book than either of you, Susan and Elizabeth... :(
(couldn't sleep last night so finished it in one go).

If Katya had been the main character it might have been more positive. I basically felt that the author never leaves behind her sense of American/western cultural superiority.

I don't want to say more here in case people are still reading. My spoiler-filled review is here. Don't hate me! :)

Great review RC - you make your case very well

Phew, so I haven't been kicked out of the group then ;))

I couldn't hate you, RC, even though I love the book.

It’s always more interesting when there are a variety of opinions to consider

Susan wrote: "I couldn't hate you, RC, even though I love the book."

Aww, yes, I'd agree that our devotion to eclectic reading outweighs any local differences over a specific book :))

Susan wrote: "She obviously has a warmer memory towards the Kingdom than Hilary Mantel did. She was obviously not a fan, judging by her novel based on the experience, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street"

Eight Months looks very tempting - I never realised it was about Saudi Arabia.

I didn't find it unreasonable that Nayir would begin to see the things weren't fair. Do I think he made a complete change? I didn't see that.

I'm not sure it was a question of 'fairness' but of him fundamentally questioning everything about his religion and culture - the key quotation for me on this is:

Something greater was crumbling inside him, the wall that held the strength of his beliefs, and it hurt to feel himself weakening, to feel this much sympathy for women like Nouf who felt so trapped by their lives, by the prescriptions of modesty and domesticity that might have suited the Prophet's wives but that didn't suit the women of this world, infected as it was by desires to go to school and travel and work and have ever greater options and appetites. He tried not to feel that the world was collapsing, but it was collapsing.

Someone feeling that their world of values and assumptions is literally collapsing and crumbling around them seems pretty big to me.

I should add, that I found this stark moment of 'revelation' not very credible. To go from being *so* reactionary as he is at the start to this sudden u-turn was not very believable.

I wonder if I've been especially hard on this book because of the contrast with Palace Walk where Mahfouz can turn a very critical eye on his culture and seems to hold it up for reflection by his original Egyptian audience - but he seems to do it with subtlety and grace. Perhaps that's one of the differences between criticising a culture of which you are a part, which you still value, but with which you don't always and completely agree, and what happens here where it's criticised by an alien outsider?

Sorry, long post!

I think when the scales come off, it does feel as if your world were collapsing. And I also think it is a question of fairness, that he never noticed before how unfair things were.

I'd say that religious values are not really about what's 'fair' (though they may overlap with fairness at times) - faith is, by definition, illogical and based on spiritual conviction.

Nayir has spiritual conviction in spades! I just thought it would take more to overturn something so deeply embedded than the book offers.

I have questioned religion and moved away, so perhaps I saw it differently.

I'm not religious at all. Despite this book not working for me, I'm still interested in seeing what others make of it, of course.

I'm happy to get your perspective. I've said often "not every book is for every person". As you have observed, reading it at the same time as Palace Walk is a probable influence on your reaction.

Palace Walk was first published in the early 1950s, while Nouf is reflective of the author's experiences in the early 1990s. There are stark differences in technology and the ability to see outside one's own culture with the two time periods.

It was also interesting that Nayir was an outsider, even among the men. He was Palestinian, so, not a Saudi. There were others we met, who also viewed the locals with some exasperation - such as the Egyptian optician! That made me laugh. I used to work in a very upmarket opticians in Regent Street and the Arab customers always insisted they had perfect eyesight and only brought sunglasses :)

I've read about 40% and am quite enjoying it so far. I agree it is interesting that Nayir is an outsider, which gives a way of looking at the society from outside and describing it to the readers - this reminded me of some completely different types of novel like Scott's Rob Roy, where the Highlands of Scotland are seen through the eyes of an English outsider.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Nouf is reflective of the author's experiences in the early 1990s"

I must have missed that - I assumed it was set at around the time the book was published i.e. 2009.

Susan wrote: "It was also interesting that Nayir was an outsider, even among the men. He was Palestinian, so, not a Saudi."

Yes, that was interesting as he was both stateless and unanchored, in some ways, yet also had a shared Arabic culture, language and religion.

I was a bit disappointed that there was less about the desert that I'd first expected. But fascinating that families wanted to hold on to a Bedouin heritage.

Yes, not sure I quite believed the footprint guy though - do you think that is possible? I mean, he could tell a woman's footprint, even in male shoes, etc. Perhaps it is, but it reminded me of the GA mysteries we love, where they are always obsessing over footprints in flowerbeds!

The footprint business does seem a bit Sherlock Holmes - I don't really think it could be possible!

Roman Clodia wrote: "If Katya had been the main character it might have been more positive...."

I'm getting somewhat bogged down now in the middle of the novel, and am also starting to wish Katya was the main character, because I think the so far brief sections with her viewpoint are more realistic and convincing than the ones with Neyir.

He seems to keep second-guessing and arguing with himself to an extent that I find somewhat frustrating, and also repetitive - especially over what women should be wearing, etc.