Mohamed Kheir

This story is told inside out and backwards, it's more of a novel than it is connected short stories, but it is not linear and now that I am done, I'm still not completely sure what is real, what is hallucinated/dreamed, what is made up by Seif's subconscious to protect his consciousness. The reader is slipping back and forth between memory, dream, reality, explanation.

Seif, a journalist, is assigned to a returned emigrée, Bahr. Bahr takes him to a variety of unusual places around and near to the city (Cairo to Alexandria, I think), post-Arab Spring. Seif finds these places fascinating and surprising, but what is real? What really happened to Bahr in the northern country he spent years living and working in? I'm not even sure if he is real, or if he is a guide Seif's mind has created for himself to understand what has happened and why things happen. Alya, Wahda--Seif struggles to remember what happened. Did what happened to Bahr actually happen to Seif?

Ch 5 Almost Forever was excellent--it tied together some of the loose-end chapters, and is also clever with the bureaucratic time wasting.… (mer)

I had my doubts about Mohamed Kheir's Slipping. The book's being promoted as a novel of magical realism set in Egypt during the Arab Spring, with comparisons to the works of other writers in the genre, including Gabriel García Márquez. Slipping, however, lacks the straightforward narrative line of, say, Love in the Time of Cholera, which makes it a more challenging read, despite its brevity. I found I had to put in significant work sorting out characters and chronology and was dubious about the title for much of the time I read it. Individual pieces were interesting, but the relationship among them was not clear.

I am hugely grateful that I stuck with this title. The pieces do fall into place by the conclusion—and the narrative that they become assembled into is gripping and original. The payoff at the novel's end is huge. Surprises about characters and events abound. I strongly recommend this title if you enjoy magical realism of if you're interested in the excellent writing being done currently by Arab authors.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via EdelweissPlus; the opinions are my own.… (mer)