The Last Watchman of Old Cairo a novel by Michael David Lukas

The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, on sale 10 April 2018, reminded me of a fresh baked loaf of challah. Three entwined stories made for a rich story, steeped in symbolism and at the end of the day just something you want to consume and enjoy.

Mr. Lukas managed to really grab my attention with the first scene, dunking his reader into the waters of the Nile c. 1000CE. By the end of the chapter I had my phone balanced on my knee ready to google, when suddenly the time and tone shifted: Berkeley, 2000CE. Five chapters in the year 1000, five in 1897 and six in the year 2000 was more than enough for me to become invested in each storyline.

Of the three stories you follow, the thread that keeps them bound together is the al-Raqb family- the family of every watchman of the Ibn Ezra synagogue in Cairo. The book opens with the first watchman, Ali, and ends with the son of the last watchman wrestling with his family's past. In between the old and new are stitched together patiently by twin sisters and patrons of the historical realm who are assisting Cambridge University in collecting historical documents.

The theme of endlessness, of chains of descendants, chains of decision making, and the passage of rituals, secrets, and time all meld together in this mesmerizing story. Lukas did very well in creating relatable, flawed characters you can empathize with and an environment that leaves you wanting to know more.

I'd recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, a good read, or even someone who is interested in Egypt or Cairo.

See you next time

The Brightest Sun by Adrienne Benson

This post is late because I wasn't sure if I wanted to publish it at all. You see, I hated this book so much that I wasn't sure I wanted to give it any sort of extra publicity at all. That being said, I feel like it would be disingenuous to only post books that I enjoyed instead of pointing out problematic books of our era. With that being said, here we go:

Adrienne Benson managed to write a book that managed to be an insult to everyone reading it. She had three main  characters, the white woman who escapes her problems by going to Africa, the other white woman who escapes her problems by going to Africa, and the Maasai woman whose problems can only be fixed by the white woman fleeing reality.

I don't even want to talk about the story here, what I want to talk about is the trend I have seen of books written by people with very narrow exposure to a culture with their main settings in that culture. In the author bio we see she was brought up by aid workers across sub-Saharan Africa, but never in one place too long. She was not exposed to village life, and was not involved with the local community. She has also written for buzzfeed, which shows as her writing style is easy to follow and the narrative is clear.

Ms. Benson also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal. I'm a returned PCV myself, and I would feel woefully unprepared to write a novel about village life in Ghana despite my two years steeped in the culture. Benson crosses a boundary that stopped being appropriate to cross decades ago, and she does it poorly.

Why am I so mad? Well, here's the sentence that made me quit the book for a solid four days before I could pick the piece of trash back up again, "All the mothers there were fine-tuned to the concept of benign neglect; that was the Maasai way." 

Let me say that I understand what she was attempting to convey, but this hamhanded morally superior tone was the opposite of informing the reader. In fact I think it informs us a lot more of the author than of the tribe she pretends to know.

I would recommend this book to a guttertrash fire or recycling plant, this will be the first book of this blog that I do not share with another person; do not buy this book.