Recently Read

The Perfume, by Patrick Suskind: a tale of an odorless guy who has a nose that can distinguish every smell in the world. His life is centered around things that smell (identities I think), but he alone has none. And as he grows up, to become one of the best perfume makers in France, incognito of course, he started to murder young virgin pretty females who have beautiful body scent. He wanted to make the absolute perfume which he did eventually. He finally get murdered and eaten by some people whom the scent he made drove them crazy. Maybe the novel symbolizes the search for identity, but I don’t know.
I am a very bad book critic, but I didn’t like it as much, despite the great publicity surrounding it. I spent in fact seven months looking for it because it was out of print. I know it is playing in movie theatres now. I don’t know why it got so much hype.

Boys of our Neighborhood أولاد حارتنا, by Najeeb Mahfouz: the famous Mahfouz novel that was banned in Egypt and now allowed. It is an interesting story, and it is not a mystery why it would be banned then. The boys of the neighborhood have tales that are told by someone who is documenting the “myth” of their neighborhood. In fact the boys represent Adam, Moses, Jesus, Mohamed, and the last is a modern or an atheist fellow. It shows how religions, though created or arose for a good cause, there is always a regression to what things has been in the previous era. Naturally the people are always fucked up, and those who represent the religious and political posts dominate in unfairness and unjustness. I liked the dialogue very much, and the way the stories were made to mirror the lives of those of yore.
The conclusion is that, فالج لا تعالج and as one of my friends used to say: عوجــــــــــــــــا