Hamdi Abu GolayyelRezensionen

To me, the sub-title of Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s A Dog with No Tail, ‘A Modern Arabic Novel’, was a misnomer of sorts. In essence, the book was more a series of vignettes focused on the life of a young Bedouin Egyptian. Each story covers some part of the young man’s life, and through them the reader discovers that he is a writer who has had some small success, which he makes sure to boast about, and that he is aspiring to greater literary achievements. In the meantime, he supports himself by working as a labourer, while carefully ensuring that he lets everyone know that this is not his true destiny.

I enjoyed the concept quite a lot and the stories were, for the most part, very interesting. However, I had one major difficulty with this book in that it was very disjointed. Several of the incidences in the narrator’s life were told in parts, covered in more than one of the stories. However, these stories didn’t usually follow each other, and in some cases were separated by ones which didn’t seem to relate to what went before, or to what came immediately afterward. It made it more difficult to get a feel for any one particular incident.

While I appreciate that this may well have been what the author was trying to achieve, using the writing style to mimic character’s feeling and motives, it didn’t really work for me. Instead, it felt as though I was fighting with the style at some points, in order to be able to understand the overall intent.

A Dog with No Tail is subtitled "A Modern Arabic Novel," but as a novel it is essentially plotless, rather a series of vignettes from the life of an Egyptian/Bedouin aspiring writer from the Fayoum who supports himself as a construction day-laborer in Cairo. It is, however, a fascinating look into a side of contemporary Egyptian life that I've never encountered before. The narrator, Hamdi, weaves tales of his family, his construction crew, fellow laborers and residents of the buildings and neighborhoods in which he works into what the book's blurb calls an "anti-Arabian Nights.

Most of Hamdi's construction work consists of tearing down and restoring buildings. He is often hauling loads of loads of sand or cement up many flights of stairs. The acts of destruction and reconstruction suggest the daily life of ordinary citizens in Egypt as well as evoke the far distant echoes of ancient Egypt. Hamdi is a respectful Muslim, but seems rather bemused by the fanatic devoutness of "the Brothers." I'd recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a low-key, undramatic, but multi-faceted insider's view of Egypt today.½

This is a book I so wanted to enjoy more than I did. There is a lot of promise in the ideas here and it did win a prestigious literary award, however it fell very flat for me and I'm not entirely sure that this is wholly related to the trials of translation or the cultural differences.

I was annoyed straight away after the first few pages because of four little words on the cover: A Modern Arabic Novel. This is no novel. It barely scrapes through as a coherent piece of writing at times but a plotline with character development in the traditional sense of the definition it isn't.

The book begins slightly confused as each short tale jumps about to a different time and place in the life of our main character. Once you get used to the style, it is quite enjoyable and different and I was halfway through and reading and having great expectations of where it was all going, unfortunately I was disappointed. The second half seems to deteriorate somewhat into the musings of a petulant teenager, and the cultural differences get more and more pronounced towards the end of the book.

If I could rename this book it would be something like: A Modern Egyptian Slacker Tale, as this is essentially what we're reading. A group of Bedouin men do occasional labouring work and our author is the main protaganist. Rather than upskill and focus on better paid positions such as plumbing and plastering, this group of men embrace their low positions as a matter of misguided macho pride. At first I thought this was a major cultural difference that I didn't understand but I now think it is just a symptom of growing up poor in a male dominated society:

"And every one of them, educated and unlettered alike, worked as manual laborers .. yet they were ashamed to work as doormen, loaders, and drivers' mates, or even as craftsmen in the construction gangs. He'd carry dirt but he wouldn't work, that was the boast."

It appears that to work as a labourer was 'the' rite of passage for men of this area of Egypt but after boasting to your friends, it was quite another thing back in your home village as our author would go to great pains to portray an educated and successful man to family and village left behind when he returned. These men appeared to embrace the two-faced nature of their way of life with gusto, another element of confusion for an already confused book.

The one exception is the character named 'the doctor' who seems to have a very short attention span so ends up trying nearly every employment position mentioned. His adventures are intriguing but just another diversion in an already disjointed tale and I couldn't help wishing that the author would focus on his own story more. The time he spent in jail for example was one of the better passages and solely written about him and his journey through life.

I do understand that the circular directionless way of life for these men is one of the themes the author wanted to portray, 'dislocated and unplotted'. In this he is quite successful but as a memoir to investigate where his own sense of purpose and identity comes from, I think it is less effectual. We never learn why and when he finished his life of a labourer and focused on his writing, just that he has the opportunity to write in an empty house they were fixing as one of his building jobs.

The writing style is so simplistic and emotionless and as already stated, quite immature at times. The book tries to be too many different things, tries to be too clever for its own good, and tries to say more then it actually does. If the author has focused on his own memories, limited the jumps along the time-line, and gave us more honest facts of his life leading up to and then after his time as a labourer, then I believe this book would have been an incredibly great tale.

However this is all just my opinion and I have to keep reminding myself that I was reading the winner of the Naguib Mahfouz medal for literature. I would just really love to know their judging criteria.

Any time I approach a work translated into English, the first thing I want to do is thank the translator. This is especially true with regard to some of the "difficult to learn" (for English speakers) languages, such as Arabic. Robin Moger brought A Dog With No Tail: A Modern Arabic Novel to English readers and allowed us to meet the author, Hamdi Abu Golayyel. He is young, edgy, and conveys to us something of the mindset of frustration and cultural complexity of family and class distinctions in Cairo.

Though a self-declared "novel," A Dog With No Tail reads more like a series of vignettes which make a circle, the beginning is the ending. Such is the metaphor for the Laborer's existence, for his mental anxieties and desires to become a writer while facing the grim, filthy reality of his daily existence.

This gritty storytelling doesn't concern itself with presenting a tidy, easily understood cultural experience but rather unsettles and provokes. Though brief at 152 pages, I found great satisfaction in going back to read it through again.

Winner of the Maguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, Hamdi Abu Golayyel tells us short sketches about a city immigrant from a village of former Bedouin, now tillers of the land in the Fayoum. The book tells us of the futility felt by generations of young rural Egyptians fitting into modern or traditional society. Many, both educated and uneducated, turn into day laborers who spend their lives working with their backs. You have seen them when you visit Egypt, wiry men, hauling basket loads of sand or cement to the tops of multi-storied buildings. An interesting and insightful book.

The book is remarkably well written, but an odd choice for translation since it relies heavily on the caricatures of the Egyptian society and so requires the reader to to have some kind of understanding prior to reading the book.

The novel is composed of a number of sketches and short stories from the life of presumably semi-fictitious narrator, modelled much after that of the author himself. They are not sorted in chronological order, mostly because it doesn't really matter because these scenes from Egypt in the 80s are very much the same as they are today.

The character of the narrator is a Badaoui from Fayoum who; in between his studies, his aspirations to become a renowned writer and his brazen failings pursuing women, works as a day labourer in Cairo. A rare portrait into one of the most timeless occupations in Egypt.

Despite the background needed to fully enjoy the stories and characters, A Dog With No Tail will still make for a fairly decent weekend read.

This book was nothing like what I was expecting, or rather hoping, it to be, which is probably part of the reason for my disliking it. However, I don't think that the low rating I am giving it was undeserved.

The book jumps clumsily from scene to scene, and I was having trouble seeing how all of these things were related. Sometimes the author would describe childhood, and then adulthood, and then junior high, and then... Well, something else. I was never entirely sure what he was trying to get across to the reader. The scattered lack of structure to this book was at times bewildering, and at times frustrating.

Another confusing thing was that I was unsure whether this was an autobiography or a work of fiction. Perhaps it is a bit of both? I would find it hard to believe that out of all the names the author could have chosen for a character, it had to be Hamdi (his own name). In fact, he even mentioned that the name "Hamdi" was unusual.

I would not be surprised if this book was partly, if not entirely, a reflection of the author's own life. The only thing that I enjoyed about this book was how realistic it was. As a setting, I never caught even the slightest glimpse of a vivid modern day Egypt, which really really disappointed me.
However, the reader does see a simple, honest portrayal of the main character. He is not made any grander, any more exciting, or any better of a person that what is realistic.

Although it is great for Golayyel to write a heartfelt, human main character, I often wished that he hadn't.
First of all, I did not like the character. The book started off with him smoking a joint, which pretty much left little hope for me warming to him. The rest of the story didn't help, and I began to strongly dislike him fairly early in the story, after this paragraph:

"I... resolved to overcharge him: if he agreed, he agreed. If he didn't he could go to hell.
'A meter's seven pounds,' I said, 'and seven sevens make forty-seven.'
'You mean forty-nine. Plus a pound from me makes it a square fifty.'
I wavered between delight at his generosity and resentment at his generosity and regretted not charging him more."
(pg 20).

How selfish, unreasonable, and ungrateful!

Another reason that I wish that the author had not concentrated so hard on writing a completely realistic book was because it was just that - too realistic. Not that I especially mind delving into a character's head, but couldn't something have happened? Couldn't there have been some sort of problem that the plot revolved around?

Well, that would have been pretty hard to do, I suppose, because there was no plot. None whatsoever.

All of these things plus a few more annoyances, such as the use of slang ("cramping his style"), bad poetry, and chapter titles that tried so hard to be clever and failed (I Reach Out My Hand and Blush That My Hand Reaches Out), were enough to convince me to put this book into my discard pile.

Kudos to the author! This book of interwoven and shifting stories captures the essence of the everyday issues facing modern marginalized Egyptians today. Recently I traveled throughout Egypt from Cairo to near the border of Sudan. I had the pleasure of meeting and befriending not only Egyptians, but also Bedouins. In fact, this book resonates deeply with me as some of the most enduring images of Egypt in Cairo and the villages are the buildings that are in constant states of renovation. [It was explained that as soon as the buildings are completed, taxes are imposed – hence the constant renovation] But the main draw of the shifting story line is the writer revealing with honesty the situation imposed and the coping of those outside of the mainstream. The narrator is a construction laborer and shares experiences and events of his family and friends that provide readers a glimpse of the everyday issues confronting the marginalized today. The original Arabic title transliterates into doer/laborer, which perfectly describes this book about constructing one’s identity through writing by the examination or demolition of one’s life experiences.

The eponymous dog refers to the author, and it's a disparaging epithet a young woman bestows on him when his wishes toward her become clear. Naturally, he does not succeed with her, and he does not succeed with the reader, either.

This isn't a novel; it's a string of loosely related sketches, the specific events of some of which correspond to certain references in others. The author writes in the first person, and actually identifies himself with his own name. Presumably, then, we're dealing with autobiographical sketches. He relates some experiences - with no unifying theme - about commuting from his village into Cairo to work. First you think he's going to find fulfillment in Cairo, but no, it's the village he prefers, because he can play the cosmopolitan man of letters, and that only because he successfully cleaned all the sand and cement dust off himself. It has the ring of honesty - I'll say that. He never flinches from admitting that he likes to boast and show off the pieces he's published in the paper. There's no unified fiction here, no progressing story.

It makes you wonder what they're doing over there at the Naguib Mafouz literary prize panel.

http://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2010/06/dog-with-no-tail-by-hamdi-abu-golayye...½

Hamdi Abu Golayyel is considered one of the new authors that is helping to advance Egyptian literature into areas that have in the past been considered taboo topics, such as the day-to-day lives and hidden ills of society. This novel by Golayyel comes across as the rambling reminisces of his protagonist, a low income construction worker of Bedouin family background, with aspirations of becoming an author of some repute. Lazy aspirations they may be, but aspirations none the less. The fact that the protagonist has a similar name as Golayyel gives this book a 'fictitious memoir' feel to it. Each chapter touches on a different 'story' from the protagonist's memory of friends, family and experiences, almost as if the protagonist is trying to draw inspiration from his own past for his yet to be written novel.

The story as a whole has an interesting random, scatter gun approach to painting a picture of Egyptian life in Cairo and the outlying desert villages of Fayoum during the 70's, 80's and 90's. The portrait that the protagonist paints for the reader is of life at a cross-roads: Government intervention has put a stop to the nomadic lifestyle of the Bedouin people, parked them on a plot of land, and left them with the peasants to make the situation work. Golayyel, via his protagonist, presents a view of Cairo as a study of shady dealings, prostitution, drug use and, shall we say, 'enterprising' construction opportunities.

I enjoyed this book but found that my lack of knowledge of Egypt or government activities described in the book made it difficult for me to relate to the characters and events portrayed.½

A Dog With No Tail is novel with no central story; in fact it scarcely qualifies as a novel at all. It is a collection of non-consecutive vignettes featuring an Egyptian construction worker who aspires to authorhood. The brief stories appear to be held together only by the presence of the protagonist and narrator Hamdi, and perhaps by a general sense of desire-ridden inertia. This would be a more engaging organizational scheme were Hamdi a more interesting or sympathetic character. Hamdi is of a common enough type; he is a seemingly brittle combination of arrogance and a desperate need to impress, often lazy but full of the certainty that he is destined for a better life than that he leads. As a descendent of Bedouins adapting to modern Egyptian life he has his points of interest. Unfortunately, he also has a number of features that do not make him particularly endearing: he insults women for the audacity of being attractive and he reflects briefly on the most holy thoughts of Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, to name a few that may have particularly resonance with an English speaking audience.

Many things happen in the stories. Some focus on Hamdi’s Bedouin ancestors, some on the sexual exploits of his day laboring brethren, the rest on events in the life of Hamdi. Though often eventful, the stories are surprisingly lacking in emotional power. Hamdi gets swept up in a violent student protest, but admits that even he doesn’t understand his own motivation. He is interrogated in military prison, he lusts after women, he joins the peaceful religious Tablighi Jamaat, all with a certain vague detachment.

Novels about authors writing necessarily teeter on the edge of narcissism, and Hamdi mentions his special status as writer often enough to frustrate. He goes out of his way to impress others with his erudition and literary aspirations, though with a knowing wince at his own weakness. This self-awareness is really his saving grace. Of course there are many men who travel from country to city, who suffer from mismatched egos and work ethics, and who hope for something more. Not all of them realize their own contradictions. Good authors need insight, and throughout A Dog With No Tail there is hope that Hamdi is at least on his way to achieving his literary dreams.

This novel is difficult to review because I have very mixed feelings about it. It has something important to say, and it delivers on that, but the way in which the message was delivered felt very disjointed and disconnected.

The narrator is a laborer who goes out to a cafe each day for work. The descendant of a Bedouin, he embodies the drifting "lostness" of that disenfranchised group. He describes how the Bedouin were uprooted and "relocated" when Egypt wanted to become a more modern state. The novel captures the sense of aimless drift that seems to have resulted from this modernization. The narrator's character himself drifts-- both in his narration, between time periods and people, and in his life, between job sites and living situations.

It's a worthwhile read. Others who enjoy a postmodern style of writing may enjoy it more than I did-- I felt like I got something out of it, but it felt like a chore as I never felt engaged with any of the characters. There were too many of them to keep up with, and the narrator himself remained distant and unreliable.

I appreciated what this novella was trying to do—to examine what it means to be a Bedouin in the modern Egyptian state, a rural migrant in the big city, a struggling author trying to come to terms with one's identity and one's aspirations—but I just was not able to engage with it. None of the characters ever felt real for me, and I frequently confused one with another. Abu Golayyel's style is determinedly post-modern—the book is part novella, part collection of short stories, with its tales told and retold out of chronological order, full of gaps and (unintentional?) contradictions. I was never even certain when the novel was taking place. At first, references seemed to put it in the 70s/80s, but then there were mentions of things which made it seem more like it was taking place in the present—and even an admiring reference to Osama bin Laden which made my eyebrows rise up to meet my hairline. As a writing experiment, I'm sure A Dog With No Tail is very sophisticated—it's just n