The Journey of Ibn Fattouma
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In this provocative and dreamy parable, a young man disillusioned by the corruption of his homeland sets out on a quest to find Gebel, the land of perfection, from which no one has ever returned. On his way, Ibn Fattouma passes through a series of very different lands--realms where the moon is worshipped, where marriage does not exist, where kings are treated like gods, and where freedom, toleration, and justice are alternately held as the highest goods. All of these places, however, are inevitably marred by the specter of war, and Ibn Fattouma finds himself continually driven onward, ever seeking. Like the protagonists of A Pilgrim's Progress and Gulliver's Travels, Naguib Mahfouz's hero travels not through any recognizable historical landscape, but through timeless aspects of human possibility.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this short, intermittently provocative fable, first published in Arabic in 1983, the Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author of the Cairo Trilogy ponders the question: What is the best way to organize a society? Betrayed by his sweetheart, young Ibn Fattouma of ``the land of Islam'' begins a journey in search of wisdom. In Mashriq, whose citizens go naked and worship the moon, he marries Arousa, a pagan woman. Thrown out of Mashriq for trying to bring up his son as a Muslim, he next stops in Haira, a land whose bloody king is worshiped as God. Ibn Fattouma escapes imprisonment for Halba, where all religions are welcomed and Muslim homosexuals peacefully demonstrate for gay rights. There he marries a Muslim female pediatrician who teaches him the value of an Islam ``of independent judgment.'' Next the hero visits Aman, a communist state with full employment but no personal freedoms. He never reaches his ultimate goal, Gebel, land of perfection. Mahfouz's pithy parable mocks the hypocrisy of nations that wage war and maintain empire in the name of brotherhood and freedom.
