I picked up and read – for reasons I don’t recall – Mahfouz’s Palace Walk – sometime before he won the Nobel Prize for Literature (1988).

So, quite a spell ago.

It was nice when Mahfouz – an Egyptian whose literary influences reflect Dostoevsky and Dickens – was awarded the Prize. Sorta a “hey, I read him before people thought he was hot shit.”

But the book – part of his Cairo Trilogy series (nope, haven’t read others) – was a great insight for me.

I’m a Westerner, and this was a great glimpse into the Mideastern world – how (why) women are veiled, about the same hypocrisy that goes on in the West goes on (in a different guise) in the Middle East, the power of Islam and so on.

Eye opener.

Today – with the Middle East a tinderbox (not assigning blame, just reporting the facts, ma’am), this book – or others of his – should move up my reading list.

On everyone’s reading lists.

OK?