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I promised to write a review some time ago butI forgot. This time is not an issue as I still remember well this novel and what I felt while reading.

The Palace Walk is the 1st volume of Cairo Trilogy, a saga which captures the life of a tyrannical patriarch and his family during three important ages in Egypt history. The trilogy starts after the end of WW1, during Egypt's occupation by British forces and its fight for liberation.

Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for Literature and Palace Walk is a perfect exhibit on the reasons he deserved the honors. Firstly, the writing perfectly combines poetic literature with remarkableo storytelling. The dialogue never fails to add to the story and to characterization. Speaking of which, the characters are round and complex, love them or hate them, they do not lack deepness. Although I hated the main character, the patriarch of the family, I had to admire the author’s skill in sketching his complex albeit despicable nature. He made me so angry that I had to take breaks from the lecture and this is another plus for the Mahfouz’s talent.

Finally, the author managed to recreate on page Cairo of 1918-1919. I felt transported in place in time to that last. I also learned interesting facts about the history of Egypt, its culture, politics and its people.