Miramar is a novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 authored by Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie...

, an Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

ian Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

-winning author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

. It was written in 1967 and translated into English in 1978.

Plot summary

The novel is set in 1960s Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...

 at the pension

Pension (lodging)

A pensione is a family-owned guest house or boarding house. This term is typically used in Portugal, France, Spain, Italy, other Continental European countries, in areas of North Africa and the Middle East that formerly had large European expatriate populations, and in some parts of South America...

 Miramar. The novel follows the interactions of the residents of the pension, its Greek mistress Mariana, and her servant. The interactions of all the residents is based around the servant girl Zohra, a beautiful peasant girl from the Beheira Governorate

Beheira Governorate

Beheira Governorate is a coastal governorate in Egypt. Located in the northern part of the country in the Nile Delta, its capital is Damanhur.-Overview:Beheira governorate enjoys an important strategical place, west of the Rosetta branch of the Nile...

 who has abandoned her village life.

As each character in turn fights for Zohra's affections or allegiance tensions and jealousies arise. In a style reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa

was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...

's 1950 film Rashomon

Rashomon (film)

The bandit's storyTajōmaru, a notorious brigand , claims that he tricked the samurai to step off the mountain trail with him and look at a cache of ancient swords he discovered. In the grove he tied the samurai to a tree, then brought the woman there. She initially tried to defend herself with a...

, the story is retold four times from the perspective of a different resident each time, allowing the reader to understand the intricacies of post-revolutionary Egyptian life.

Symbolism

As with many Naguib Mahfouz novels, Miramar is rife with symbolism. The character Zohra has been proposed to symbolize the ideal modern Egyptian/Egypt. She is hard working and honest but uneducated, and constantly being pulled by different forces.
Among those pulling her and Egypt are Europeans, Egyptian nationalists (Wafd party

Wafd Party

The Wafd Party was a nationalist liberal political party in Egypt. It was said to be Egypt's most popular and influential political party for a period in the 1920s and 30s...

), the wealthy upper-class, the Abdel Nasser regime and its followers, and the Muslim Brotherhood

Muslim Brotherhood

The Society of the Muslim Brothers is the world's oldest and one of the largest Islamist parties, and is the largest political opposition organization in many Arab states. It was founded in 1928 in Egypt by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna and by the late 1940s had an...

.

External links

• http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/m/naguib-mahfouz/miramar.htm