In the Eye of the Sun

by Ahdaf Soueif

Set amidst the turmoil of contemporary Middle Eastern politics, this vivid and highly-acclaimed novel by an Egyptian journalist is an intimate look into the lives of Arab women today. Here, a woman who grows up among the Egyptian elite, marries a Westernized husband, and, while pursuing graduate study, becomes embroiled in a love affair with an uncouth Englishman.

Genres: Fiction, Egypt, Feminism, Novels, Historical Fiction, Literature, Africa

816 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Ahdaf Soueif (Arabic: أهداف سويف) is an Egyptian short story writer, novelist and political and cultural commentator. She was educated in Egypt and England - studied for a PhD in linguistics at the University of Lancaster.

Her novel The Map of Love (1999) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and subsequently translated into 21 languages. Soueif writes primarily in English, but her Arabic-speaking readers say they can hear the Arabic through the English. Along with in-depth and sensitive readings of Egyptian history and politics, Soueif also writes about Palestinians in her fiction and non-fiction. A shorter version of "Under the Gun: A Palestinian Journey" was originally published in The Guardian and then printed in full in Soueif's recent collection of essays, Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground (2004). Soueif has also translated Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah (with a foreword by Edward Said) from Arabic into English.


In 2007, Soueif was one of more than 100 artists and writers who signed an open letter initiated by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism and the South West Asian, North African Bay Area Queers (SWANABAQ) and calling on the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival "to honor calls for an international boycott of Israeli political and cultural institutions, by discontinuing Israeli consulate sponsorship of the LGBT film festival and not cosponsoring events with the Israeli consulate."


In 2008 she initiated the first Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest). Soueif is also a cultural and political commentator for the Guardian newspaper and she has been reporting on the Egyptian revolution. In January 2012 she published Cairo: My City, Our Revolution – a personal account of the first year of the Egyptian revolution

Reviews

[Zanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

After 800 pages of easy reading emotional turmoil I was so involved with the characters I wanted to read on and spend more time with Asya and her generation as they grew older - my hunger to know them better and find out what happened to them only increased, especially Deena, Asya's generous, politically conscious, brilliant yet worldly science graduate sister, who I liked most of all. Undoubtedly one of the attractions of the book is the aesthetic and recreational variety of the lifestyle the family enjoys: they are professionals in a society where professionals form a prosperous and influential class. I don't remember my parents ever having so much as a dinner party, and I am too shy to hold one myself, which probably accounts for my insatiable pleasure in reading about guests and gatherings. Related to this was my savouring of place, the specificity of cosmopolitan, decadent, sophisticated, elegant Cairo...

Even in Kyoto
Hearing the cuckoo's call
I long for Kyoto
- Basho

Cairo! How can a book so strongly character-centred, plot-driven, personal, have left me with such a yearning for a place changed and a time passed? Perhaps because I myself hail from the anonymous North of England that so depresses Asya, that threatens to suck the life from her, desperately lonely among my unsociable kin.

Soueif cuts historical background into the story by inserting dated snippets of news, like extracts from a journalistic timeline. This device allows her to inform a wider English-speaking audience, likely to have limited awareness of these histories or the Egyptian perspective on them, of events that impinge on the lives of the characters, without having the cast spout exposition - they can discuss events and their effects quite naturally. Structurally, the novel opens in 1979, jumps back to 1967 and works its way forward to 1979 again, and has chapters divided into 'scenes' as if Soueif envisioned it as a movie. Minute details of action like applying mascara (Asya is never less than immaculately turned out, even for bed) are presented not suggestively by the author but as aspects of Asya's intention turning into language in a mind over-trained to verbalise, the way I sometimes catch an inner voice noting 'Zanna stirred in a tin of tomatoes and a slosh of olive oil'. To me this isn't dull mundanity; not only does it create an intimate understanding of and sympathy with our protagonist and reveal her lexic orientation as someone embedded, encamped, engulfed in literature and language, but along with the narration of her and other characters' thoughts, it builds up a dense, intricate texture that invites the movie reel to roll behind my eyes.

Most novels deal with sexuality or just sex on some level, and I guess that focussing on a character negotiating a conservative and sexist framing of female purity is hardly a fresh theme, but Ahdaf's treatment is fresh, incisively nuanced, multi-layered, wholly believable, as well as sizzlingly erotic. She has the gift of giving life to her characters in spades - Asya never lapses into stereotype or appears a vehicle for authorial point-making. Depth and complexity arise from the fact that restrictions on love relationships are firm in an otherwise rather open, cosmopolitan society and among a social class whose relationship to tradition is inflected by privileged access to career choices, higher education and global travel. Asya's situation is thrown into relief by a trip to Italy, in which a very similar traditional sexual conservatism meets an ostensibly 'permissive' convention among youth and tourists. Asya is positioned to see this compulsory heterosexuality as 'degrading' and exploitative, but when a man who is attracted to her but happy to keep their dalliance celibate asks her not to let anyone know that they are not sleeping together, she is delighted by the reversal of secrecy compared to Egypt. The oppression is always greener on the other side...

(I want to quash any impression that this story fits tidily into a white Euro-USian feminist/mainstream political framing of majority-Muslim or Arab societies as brutally oppressive towards women, who need to be rescued from such contexts. I hardly need add that this framing silences Muslim/Arab women by declaring that other women must speak for them, criminalises Muslim/Arab men, and is used to legitimise colonial expansion ('civilising missions''bringing democracy'). As a side effect, women are prevented from articulating and criticising gender oppression that affects them because such critique risks being read and dismissed as internalised imperialism. Literature like this is a sure antidote to nuance-free notions about Egyptian women.)

The particular patriarchy of Asya's social context delays her love marriage, apparently destructively, but I felt that the couple's problems went much deeper. For me the key moment was when Asya listed the things Saif disliked about her - they were core aspects of her very style of being; they were the things I adored about her. The Egyptian men in Asya's life are courteous and gentle towards and considerate and protective of women (this is my impression of the Muslim/Arab equivalent of European 'chivalry'), and contrast with the white man with whom she becomes closely acquainted; a person so self-centred and suffused with entitlement he constantly demands that his lover 'be herself' when he so obviously means 'stop being yourself and be the way I want you to be'. I read this as a very strongly feminist and woman-oriented text. Women in Asya's life negotiate diverse situations, make diverse choices, and manage the consequences. One of Asya's friends is in love with a Palestinian classmate, whose life becomes increasingly difficult over the course of the narrative. The hostility towards Palestinians and social class dynamics in Egyptian society are illuminated through relationships seen from female perspectives.

Soueif skillfully integrates layers of political awareness and a keenly felt sense of place into the spaces of private life in this work, and these fine ingredients are well seasoned by literary and music references from Euro-Usian culture. Asya questions her focus in education on English literature, and in the scene in which she is made to 'produce' Arabic sounds for a class on phonemics her discomfort finally forces her into silence. Her experience as a temporary migrant, suffused with terrible loneliness, also includes exotification. This fringe of unresolved unease around the globalisation (hegemony) of white/anglo culture is counterpointed by Asya's joy in English-language poetry and literature, which she experiences passionately. It's interesting that Soueif has her unwillingly, laboriously perform a juiceless analysis on this corpus (killing the pleasure). I took this as a wry comment on 'Western' education as well as futher detailing of Asya's character 'this will teach machines to understand metaphor', she grimly reflects. The experience galvanises her to push hard, against barriers hidden by the impression of free choice, against her mother's deep and long patience, against much of her own socialisation, for the space that will allow her to know her desires and direct her life towards meaning and fulfilment.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review and rating to come.

[Aubrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You don't have to live with your choices for ever."

This book's an odd duck, in that you'd be hard pressed to find fifty more like it to fill up your Modern Library's Best Books of the 20th century list, which is probably why the latter looks the way it does. For this work, the length, the gender, the author's ethnic nationality actually corresponding to the narrated place: it makes sense when one comes across a far more popular Man Booker contestant in the author's bibliography, but that was composed afterward. In any case, ticking off yet another behemoth that's not of the War and Peace demographic makes me think I should really take on the Sisyphean effort that is catching up on my backlog of daily email review compilations, in hopes of replenishing my stock if nothing else. I had forgotten the days when I could blow through 300 pages of a single book without having to gather all that up into something shorter and cognizant and my own in the aftermath.

The nice thing about actually having read Tolstoy and Evans (it's been a while since Flaubert, so I won't take on that) is I can comfortably side eye people's comparisons when necessary. Soueif's epigrams may be Middlemarch, but her narrative control has at key points the coldness and closeness of The Golden Notebook, right down to her variation on the theme of political nonfiction digressive insertion into narrative fiction. Middlemarch has that, too, but it doesn't have transcripts. I would've needed more footnotes if there hadn't been so much domestic plot, a statement which is as exactly as you win some you lose some as it sounds.

It's true that I ripped through this, smallish close set print and all, but I don't think I'll ever reread it after gaining further knowledge about all the events referenced by the narrative as current. I chalk this up to my final quarter as an English undergrad, wherein the topics of my three final essays were suicide, mental abuse, and the education of the devil. Specifically, the mental abuse was a type known as gaslighting, and in the case of this work, I could see the train coming 200 pages in and had to wait another 400 to 500 for the fallout. It's different with horror movies when you're screaming at the characters to run because you know the audience is, for the most part, on your side.

Considering how simplified a view the general public has of gaslighting, I doubt others will have this issue. For me, it meant taking refuge in the jargon of academia and politics when I could, a few stellar scenes such as the real time translation of Arabic oral poetry and the meditation on colonialism and the arts, as well as the general ease in which the story worked its way across the complexities of Egypt, the Middle East, and the world at large, making it worthwhile. There's also the whole "Modern Egyptians aren't real Egyptians" spiel being laid to rest in a wonderfully lengthy and comprehensive way. Bonus points for this book being published within my lifetime: I always enjoy that the times, they are a-changin'.

Ah, but this is her life: her life — not a book he's writing.

[Emily Coffee and Commentary · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating, gripping novel about loosing and finding one’s identity, and coming to appreciate oneself. Discussions of feminism, mental health, ambition, and the human ego are thorough, and very relatable. How often do we let our relationship with others define us? How often do we settle into a course in life that feels conditioned or expected? How daunting it is to stray from that course and attempt to start over and get reintroduced to ourselves ans our passions? The parts about metaphors and linguistics, as well as the “real-time” updated of Egypt itself, as it navigates war, political, and social changes were also incredibly informative and interesting to read. This novel is well worth the time, I felt such a tenderness for Asya; if we cannot see ourselves in her, we can most certainly see her in someone we know.

[jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

***finished this book, and this endless, sprawling review!***

i'm finding myself liking this a lot, yet also being a bit tired of it. i wish it were shorter. at the same time, i deeply enjoy the language and a part of me will be sad when this ends.

as people have pointed out here, soueif is consciously reprising the style of the massive 19th century novel centered around the plight of an unhappy heroine, and the references to Anna Karenina and Middlemarch abound. i have not read Anna Karenina, and i read Middlemarch some time ago, but my impression is that such novels pivoted on more stories and more narrative threads than Eye of the Sun. in fact, Eye of the Sun stays pointedly focused on its protagonist, Asya, who is almost the sole point of view. since the side-characters are multiple and potentially rich (the novel opens with a striking representation of asya's uncle, hamid, who however recedes to the background in the rest of the novel), you wonder whether she would not have done better to give them more room in which to expand.

but maybe the narrowness of the focus is the novel's point, and, if so, i most certainly do not feel in any position to say that soueif fails. this is a striking book in a number of respects, and i'm really looking forward to finishing it and being able to say more about the themes it covers.

let me now talk for a second about genre and audience. if amazon.com and goodreads are any indication, many people have read this book, which is encouraging. i wonder though about contemporary tolerance for the sprawling psychological/realist 19th century novel, with its pleasure in the act of storytelling, its desire to immerse us in the story, anticipating and meeting our delight in the scene, the texture of the moment, the substance of places, and, above all, the rich emotional and mental reverberations that are unleashed in the interaction between the characters, their stories, and their surroundings. maybe this is an outmoded way of telling stories, and not only because we have in the meantime picked up a variety of ways in which stories are told and transmitted. i wonder whether the outmodedness of the large realist/psychological novel, if there at all, is not due to a restlessness we have acquired with the act of deep, nuanced, and unrelenting psychological probing, its fixed focus on the characters' inner lives, its fascination with melancholy and pain.

i'm babbling. i'm probably entirely wrong. i'll come back to these thoughts. but i'm struck by simon's current impatience with fanny burney, and wondering whether we might not have outgrown the genre. which is not to say that all examples of it are outgrowable, and that there aren't superb and timeless models of this and any style. still, Middlemarch could not be written now, and neither could the Iliad.

--------------------------------
TAKE TWO *** spoilers ***

i'm almost at the end but i can't finish this book at this time. this is one painful book. soueif builds such a relentless, single-minded, deeply nuanced yet jaggernaut-like destructive path for young asya, i feel that i'm getting destroyed at the same pace as she is. even if she survives the book unscathed (and we know that, to some extent at least, she does), the psychic erosion she undergoes, the systematic emptying out of her self and her strength, the demolition of her life and vitality seem almost irremediable.

this book is most certainly about sexual politics (it is about sex), but i am not sure that, as edward said suggests in his write-up, it's specifically about the sexual politics of the arab world. asya, her family, her husband are deeply westernized people. in fact, the book takes great pains to represent them as sophisticated, erudite, and, to a large extent, liberated. they are the cairo elite, university professors enamored of english lit, and they consider themselves -- at least asya does -- pretty much bicultural. of course the arab influence is massive, and negotiating it while navigating the western world is one of these characters' most watchable enterprises. at the same time, though, it seems to me that what asya experiences, her sexual martyrdom, this terrible calvary, is something any western woman can relate to with great ease. at bottom, this is a novel of domestic abuse, seen from the p.o.v. of the woman. what's so remarkable about it (and it is a remarkable novel) is that the abuse is portrayed subtly and over such a large number of pages (soueif's narrative patience is astounding). asya is barely aware of it, and so are we. asya assumes much of the blame for it, and at first we are tempted to blame her, too. in other words, soueif does not even try to simplify the terrible situations men and women build for themselves and each other, often in perfectly good faith and equally perfect ignorance. asya's damnation is not the violence she endures, but her constant need to investigate, probe, understand. no one else in the book asks her or himself this many questions. asya is the book's relentless questioner.

i'm still a bit sorry that the book's secondary characters fall by the wayside, but asya's story is sure powerful, and has good and sturdy legs on which to carry this novelistic tour-de-force.

--------------------------------
and now that i've finished this, some words on what it's about. oh, it's about egypt and thriving/teeming/alive third-world cities. cairo surely plays a big role here, even though unfortunately much of the pleasures of the city are lost on me. but i love novels that celebrate cities: avenues, small streets, quarters, life-styles, old homes, poor homes, street vendors, shops, markets, monuments (the pyramids!), cemeteries, universities, botanic gardens, riverfronts, little niches where lovers kiss and passersby don't bother them. london is similarly celebrated, and england in general, which becomes delightful and alive in spite of its grayness and its mud the moment asif joins asya in it.

asif brings life with him. he also brings a peculiar death, the death -- for asya -- of foreclosed communication, the presumption that you know the other therefore do not need to listen to her, a misguided protectiveness, adoration, infantilization.

a lovely scene, towards the end, between asya and her mother; and a great celebration of women, mothers, non mothers, lovers, sisters, friends, beautiful and rash and smart and brilliant and oh so on top of everything, amazingly resilient.

and asya's resurrection (i didn't think it possible, but this is fiction and you can do anything you want), her return to her family, to egypt, which is however a transformed country, more westernized for sure but also changed by war, the constant strife with israel, the bullying on the part of the americans, the political imprisonments, the palestinian question, the rise of fundamentalism.... great book, not for the faint of heart.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Nothing here really on the artsy prosey side. Just straight literalist realist stuff (no bells no whistles) about stuff that is interesting. So come here for the what-its-about. And frankly I cave to our multi=cultural evaluationalism ; a feminist Egyptian pov is probably a good think to throw into your novel reading experience. [sure, it could've been a few pages shorter of course but what would you've done with that one non=reading day you may have gained with 100 pages fewer in the eye of the sun?]

[Bloodorange · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is 3.5 stars, rounded up.

This book was completely different from what I expected. Instead of a sweeping family saga it promised to be, it was nearly 800 pages of solipsist whining of a privileged young woman. Yet although I was frequently irritated out of my senses, I was never, ever bored.

Reason 1: a crucial part of the story revolves around whether the protagonist, Asya, will or will not write her Ph.D. thesis. Yes, I know what it sounds like, but as anyone who tried to write a Ph.D. thesis in humanities knows, this situation has all the makings of a good thriller, and Soueif knows how to bring out its dramatic potential. (I feel this may sound as if it was ironically intended; it isn’t. I felt an almost physical pain when she was describing writing the thesis on something her character was not interested in.)

Reason 2: the details. There are some thing I wish I could unread – the depilation scenes, for instance, although I know that hair removal is a huge part of life for most Middle-Eastern women – but through amassing, and I really mean amassing, of detail Soueif managed to create a book that transports – to Egypt, Paris, Damascus, North England, London.

Reason 3: the characters. This novel features one of the most puzzling male character I’ve encountered in fiction. Out of the three key male figures in the novel, two turn out to be completely different than expected. I loved the curious reversal of gender/race roles. The Oriental male, Asya’s husband, is a James Bond-like figure: a mysterious, mostly restrained, mock-English gentleman; he is untypically sexually passive, although he offers women an attractive fantasy life. The Occidental male - a white, British man - is frenetic, sexually voracious, volatile - features ascribed to black males since Renaissance; I see him as a travesty of Othello. The most sympathetic male character and Asya’s romantic interest shares the fate of many a Bond girl, much to my dismay.

Reason 4: exploring national identity. This book is rather a little like a Henry James novel - it is a novel about Egyptians being Egyptian outside Egypt - transplanted to a different soil, they take their conditioning, education, repressions with them, and play out their dramas far from the protective net of their families.

Things I disliked about the book (apart from its sheer bulk):

Complaint 1: The relationships between the sexes. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why Asya stays so long with either of the men in the novel. Her lover is a nightmare: needy, selfish, seeing her as his Egyptian sex slave. Her husband is emotionally distant at first, unnerving second, and finally abusive – yet she never questions the situation, never tries to find out what he is actually doing during their absurdly long separations, and finally, when a woman in the street looks at her and encourages her to go to a shelter for battered wives, Asya’s only answer is that she's not not a battered wife (and this is because...?!). Both men are telling her what to do, how to behave, what to wear, and, directly or indirectly, what she really is like.

Complaint 2: the ending. There’s very little sense of closure, which may be due to the fact that the novel is at least partly autobiographical. The husband simply becomes irrelevant; we get no explanation of his behaviour, motives, or even his mystery job. There's something in me that shouts lazy writing, but another part in me says it's realistic.

I don’t like how the writer decides to end the story, with Asya returning home, alone, to her roots, her family, her culture, and the insta-empowerment

Thanks to Carol for a great buddy read and pushing me to verbalize my thoughts :)

[Marcy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish Soueif ended the novel where I left off two days ago (around page 500). The first part of the novel, when the protagonist, Asya, is still in Egypt was far more interesting, I'm not enthralled with her story once she moves to England. What takes up much of the novel's energy, is Asya's relationship with her husband, Saif. I like the few parts when we get to read Saif's thoughts the most. But those become increasingly rare as the novel progresses. There are so many of the other characters whose stories drop off so that eventually the novel focuses solely on Asya and her English lover Gerald Stone, which makes me lose interest because Stone is a rather obnoxious character. At times I felt he would become a psycho killer the way you think he's gone and then he appears in Asya's bedroom waiting for her. The men in Asya's life seem to be emotionally, if not mentally, disturbed. But Gerald feels parasitic. You think he is finally gone, but then he reappears.

The first few hundred pages the novel are quite moving. The way Soueif writes about middle-class Egypt in the 1960s and 70s is beautifully drawn. Also, Soueif's politics here are more compelling some of her nonfiction. This part was also enjoyable because events surrounding Asya's life are intertwined with historical events. For example, Asya sat for her baccalaureate / tawjihi examinations at the same time that Israelis launched the 1967 war. I like the way Asya's life is connected to the world around her. Or when Asya and Saif are in Lebanon during the Civil War (although there is a slight factual error there in that the characters are staying at the Phoenicia hotel in Beirut and she says that Israelis live in settlements 30 kilometers away, which is not possible). One final note: there are also grammatical errors (e.g., missing nouns that adjectives are trying to modify or preposition errors) that make it quite difficult to sift through the prose at times.

[Niledaughter · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a heart breaking book !!
So where should start from ?!
The novel presents life between 1967 to 1980 in the middle east moving to Europe .. , so in the back ground ; we see the historical events that took place in that period ,Egypt , the wars with Israel , Palestine situation ..Jordan ..Lebanon , Saudi Arabia , Syria & Iran , the political transformation From Naser to Sadat , all the detailed changes : economically , socially , culture & even in Urban patterns .

While on the front we see the life of a family & their surroundings , through them we meet Muslims , Christians , leftists , servants , farmers , workers , the Elite .. westernized people and the fundamentalists rising,we also see the traditions ,religion ideologies , taboos , and all what concerns women , Ahdaf describes everything in so much details !

the novel’s main core is based around Asya , her life between Egypt & England in that critical period , with her eyes we adore Egypt , get introduced to England And travel to different European countries , one of the most interesting parts to me was the comparison between the life of the Nile and the life of the Thames ! in Asya's ten years journey towards maturity : we live love , romance , passion , sexuality , compassion , humiliation , abuse , failure , infidelity , regrets , bitterness , breaking down & loss !! I can not meet a personality like Asya every day with all her contradictions that present the Cultural duality values she has , but when I read Ahdaf’s biography I felt that Asya is - some how - part of her , specially in her relation with her mother & her childhood , also I can see that one of Asya’s friends in the novel seems to be inspired by Radwa Ashour - who is one of Ahdaf’s friends-and her husband Mourid Barghouti (auther of I saw Ramallah) , this gives more reality to the atmosphere ..

honestly , I hesitated at first to rate it as 4 (not because it does not deserve it) but because I thought I could not rate it as (The map of love) that captured my heart , while (In the eye of the sun) really.. really hurt my stomach With its tragedy ! beside I was very much annoyed by Asya in some parts … true I loved her ..loved her descriptions & meditation , I sympathized with her, cried with her , loved Saif with her & understood her reasons for her behavior ; but I could not justify her behavior or her cruelty to herself before anybody else !

But I decided to rate it as 5 because of Ahdaf that manage so cleverly to prevent me from letting this 800 pages book down before finishing it !! her so much full of life characters , her brilliant way that expressed human feelings & weakness , for the metaphors she used and specially for the last part of the book ! wow - It is the most painful one but so powerful : the conformations between Asya & Saif , Asya & her mother ..Asya & the mirror ..then Asya & the memories !! also the way she discussed Islam & traditions , the translations of Quraan , and from anther side Om Kulthom's songs , this was an unforgettable book !

N.B
May be The open language of the novel was a surprise to me because this was not Ahdaf’s style in ( The map of love) , but regarding that the vital problem in the main couple’s life in the novel (Asya & Saif) is sexual – although it was only the appearing part of the ice mountain in the deep ocean - so this method can be clearly understood .

Here is a very interesting review , but it has spoilers
http://www.mouthshut.com/review/In_th...

Sorry for talking so much :(

Edit (28- 7- 2010)
I edit to add the following link , a link to Ahdaf's detailed profile in the Guardian , it shows where (Ashia) & (in the eye of the sun) intersect with her real personal life and her experiences in a critical misty area of the Common space between east & west .
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/...

this link is a symbolic analysis of the novel and the oriental reactions to it , the link is in Arabic , it is the best I read so far .
http://yasser-best.blogspot.com/2007/...

[Sara Salem · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know what it is about this book but it hurts to finish it. I love Asya, and Saif, and every little detail in this story.

[ياسر ثابت · Rating 4 out of 5]

السرد في هذه الرواية ليس أسير إطار الجسد الناعم ونداءاته المحمومة للاكتمال بالآخر، ولا هو مقيدٌ بإطار الغرف المغلقة ونصف المضاءة، وإنما أعلن عن حضوره المتماهي مع الراهن الثقافي والسياسي والاقتصادي والاجتماعي.
إخفاق الزوج الشرقي في فك رموز الجسد، ونجاح العشيق الغربي في اكتشاف أسرار الأنوثة الكامنة، كان سببـًا رئيسيـًا في الحملة العنيفة التي شنها البعض في العالم العربي على الروائية.
ربما يفسر هذا موقف أهداف سويف من ترجمة "في عين الشمس" إلى اللغة العربية، وقولها إن الترجمات التي عُرضت عليها حتى الآن تفتقد "نكهة النص".
لقد ترنح كثيرون بسبب ضربة موجعة وجهتها لهم "آسيا العلما" حين وجدت في الرجل البريطاني عاشقـًا يعيد صياغة أنوثتها ويمنحها في لحظات الوصال الحميمة ما افتقدته من مشاعر وأحاسيس مع زوجها الشرقي. ورأى نقاد عرب أن نجاح الغربي في ترويض رغبات تلك المرأة الشرقية نوعٌ من الاستلاب والاستسلام للغرب، حتى أن بعض الأقلام العربية رأت في خط سير الرواية وبطلتها انسحاقـًا أمام الغرب.
مرة أخرى، يتحول الجسد إلى سيرة ذاتية، حتى دون تفكير أو استئذان.

[L · Rating 5 out of 5]

I deeply loved this book. At one & the same time it was a beautiful book to read, with wonderful characters, but also a painful book to read, with characters you just want to shake some sense into. I guess that means the Soueif has written engaging, believeable characters about who you very much care. It was painful and annoying as all get out to follow Asya as she virtually conspires with others to make a hash of her life. She is modern and free, while at the same time, a passive victim. Yes, painful and beautiful, to gripping to put down. This is also a wonderful view into the lives of privileged Egyptian women, lives that perhaps do not fit the stereotype. Hence the five stars. (If only there had been more attention to less privileged women, no?)

Quasi-Spoiler: Of course, if you know anything about IPV, and not that there is much violence, per se here, but there is control/domination, you know she is too caught up in the situation to save herself. All the classic moves are there. It is very hard to watch as Asya's life spins out of her control, as she makes one devastating move after another, all while being too timid to make the obvious moves that could change the course.

[Kymberlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far this book is amazing! However, my semester started before I could finish, so I'll be in suspense until December. I think it's a fantastic window into the lives of women in the contemporary Middle East, and in particular, the choices they are faced with vis-a-vis marriage, sex, and love. It's really beautifully written, too.

So now I'm finished, and I have to say, I liked this book more when I reading it this summer. I still like it very much. However, there were at least 100 pages during which I was pretty annoyed with the protagonist. I think that was the point thought. Anyway, I still highly recommend this book.

[Yasmin Sabry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've spent 3 months reading this amazing novel. I must say i've enjoyed every single word. It's a journey through history since Abdel Nasser's days till the final days of Sadat, yet it's not a historical novel, it rather tells how people lived their day to day lives during that time with highlights on a love story that makes a person wonders.... Does love truely means that two persons should melt inside one being, or should each one maintain their own independence or just reach a certain point of balance?!
On a side note, knowing a lot about Ahdaf Soueif and her real family and friends, i could see some of them in the characters of the novel... I could see the amazing Radwa Ashour and her struggle marrying a Palestinian... I could see the ever-so-strong Laila Soueif raising her children with a husband spending most of his life in prison for a cause...

[Jalilah · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I liked: the descriptions of Egypt, the historical timeline in which the story takes place, starting with when Nasser is president, the 6 day war and new presidency with Sadat, as well as how these events were perceived in the West as opposed to in Egypt.
What I didn't like: the long drawn out love triangle drama between an Egyptian couple and an Englishman. It could have been a compelling story had the book been better edited, but 785 pages of it was just too long! I highly suggest to anyone wanting to read Ahdaf Soueif to start with The Map of Love. It is much better written!

[Maher Battuti · Rating 4 out of 5]

رواية صادقة من مؤلفة متمرسة فى أدب الرواية العالمية ، تقص فيها أحداث حياة دارسة أكاديمية تقف بين عالمين ، فى مصر وفى إنجلترا . وهى فى لغة سلسة وسرد على درجة عالية من الحرفية . ولا يخفى على القارئ وجود بعض الملامح الذاتية فى الأحداث

[Manal]

تقريباً 800 صفحة!!.. نفسى أخلصها قبل ما أموت :D

[Em · Rating 4 out of 5]

i'm totally in love with the narrative style

[Catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am finding this book confusing. There are times when I really don't like the format that the author is using. Then I get mad at how stupid the characters seem . . . well, the actions they take. But it still is an interesting view on the history/times in Egypt when Nasser and Sadat were running things, various Egyptian military actions with the Israelis, Suez Canal, young egyptian students thinking they are revolutionaries. Actually, it can be interesting to understand some of the background to how Egypt has gotten to the point of their current revolution.

But the main character is an academic and part of the time she is living in the UK while pursuing a PhD. All she wants to do is go back to Cairo to teach at the university. Her husband seems to be a bit of an S.O.B. . . . after she marries him (no surprise there but it is a strange relationship). The 60's and 70's are more modern in many ways than the view I have of current Cairo . . . modern in a Western way that is.

Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't . . . skipping bits at times so I can finish it.

[Carmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

In order to read this book I think someone must be interested in both feminine emotions and egyptian culture.
It deals with the maturity of a young egyptian girl belonging to the cultural elite of Cairo during the 60's and 70's. The personal plights she faces about desire, sex, love and affection during her growth are stressed by the fact that she lives abroad for a certain period of time. She discovers through a quite nerve-wracking process that she does not identify herself with the path that her family has already designed for her. It turns out also that she does not feel desire, affection and love at the same time.
In the end it is a question of breaking the schemes and build our own personality, which is always more likely to happen when far from home.
The book is quite long and sometimes I have felt frustrated by the lack of congruence of its main characters. However,I have stuck to it till the end, and for this reason I would rate it somewhere between 3 and 4 stars.

[Tarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this to get a better understanding of the role of women in the Arab world, and I got exactly that. This is a particular perspective – a very educated woman raised in a relatively liberal family in Egypt, living for much of the book in England – but I feel from that perspective I learned a lot. Souief has a knack for including just the right amount of details for readers unfamiliar with the culture and traditions of Egypt. This is a very long book, but it was a fast read, because the writing is excellent. There’s also a lot of historical reference (the story takes place from the late ’60s-’70s), which was somewhat confusing for me, but also helped me understand a lot more about the political dynamics of the Middle East – issues that are still problematic today.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was recently recommended to me by an Egyptian feminist who said, "Read this book, and you'll understand everything we go through." While I didn't find this book to be as analytical as "A Border Passage" - it is billed as fiction, after all - I thought "In the Eye of the Sun" was deeply reflective and moving. As a woman living in Egypt, educated in the West (as a grad student, no less), and struggling to understand the WHY of things here, I thought it was an excellent read. I don't know that I've ever read such an evocative portrayal of a submissive female (although the word itself is never used). I read this very long book in about 4 days and could hardly put it down.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was incredibly powerful, so much so that at times it made me dizzy. There were two components to this coming of age story that were fascinating: first, the complex male-female relationships and the brutally accurate ups and downs of a marriage. The second was the middle eastern setting; Soueif placed her characters against a political background, which made the novel rich and fascinating. I came out of it floored by the emotional aspects of the novel and as well as feeling as if I'd gained an entire lifetime's knowledge about modern Egypt.

[Zainab Magdy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sensational...moved me like no other book. Beautiful in every sense

[Jude · Rating 2 out of 5]

ok um it was good but what the hell. what the fuck

[Amélie · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'ai eu une drôle de semaine. (& on est seulement mercredi. Ha!) Il y a des moments qui nous confrontent à des parts secrètes & empoussiérées de nous-mêmes. Il y a des livres qui font la même chose. Je repense beaucoup à celui-ci, entre deux secousses.

Le roman de Soueif est sûrement trop long & trop chargé, un peu (beaucoup) à la manière des romans du dix-neuvième qui voulaient tout décrire, tout penser, tout détailler. On y suit une héroïne ambitieuse & vive & intelligente & malchanceuse en amour, Asya, qui grandit au Caire dans les années soixante & soixante-dix. Sa famille est aisée, ses parents ont fait leur PhD en Angleterre & elle le fera aussi, sa vie semble parfois une longue succession de découvertes littéraires & de garden-partys à l'égyptienne ; ça ne l'empêche pas de se heurter assez vite aux traditions qui continuent à gronder, souterraines, dans tous les replis de l'intimité.

La façon dont ce livre présente la violence conjugale (spoiler alert?) est insidieuse & parfaite. Elle donne mal au cœur. Elle entre dans la tête d'Asya & nous y enferme. C'est étroit & étouffant & ça donne le goût de pitcher le livre au bout de ses bras. On a envie de se retourner contre la victime pour lui dire de se ressaisir. On se sent assez tout croche, quand on se rend compte de se qu'on est en train de penser.

Le roman intègre aussi très intelligemment les événements historiques qui ont marqué l'Égypte de l'époque -- la Guerre des Six Jours, la mort de Nasser, la répression des opposants politiques. La fenêtre que le livre ouvre sur la société qui est celle d'Asya est probablement partielle parce que tellement privilégiée, mais le portrait qu'en trace Soueif est fin, nuancé, chaleureux -- & très mordant, lorsqu'elle en a envie.

Pour les amoureux de grosses briques un peu lentes mais bouleversantes, à leur façon.

[Hadeel Mashhour · Rating 5 out of 5]

it has been two days since I have finished the book and till now everytime I walk around the apartment, I automatically reach for the book to read a bit. I miss it so much.

Let's talk about Ahdaf Soueif a little. She is like the most underrated Egyptian author I have come across so far. Such an easiness and grace in her writing that makes eth so reachable, so relatable! The chapters with Asya and Gerald were so frustrating for me as if I were Asya herself fearing for eth and not willing to do any. I loved the paragraphs of Seif's side of the story. The way she portrays Egypt, and the whole family was so on point. I really can't find suitable words to describe this lady.
I came across this interview with Leila Souief while I was reading the book and the similarity between their actual life and the book made me feel even more involved and happy. Here's the link:
http://bidoun.org/articles/Laila-Soueif

I just love this family.

""And she surprises herself by enjoying the solitude -not the loneliness of the campus where she was surrounded by ppl she didn't know and would never know, but this, this true solitude, and the sense of occasion it gives rise to when she hears the clip-chopping of a horse and runs to her window to see a rider from the stables two miles away trotting along the path under her window. She notices things she had never seen before: changes in the color of the sky, in the patterns of clouds, in the little plot that passes for her back garden."

Strongly recommended و بشدة و بعنف

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great, great book. Great in its hefty, many-paged hugeness as well as the scope of the story it told.

The story flips between life in a sometimes-war-torn and always-in-turmoil Egypt against the rainy and grey and extremely 'normal' England. The contrasts between life in the heat, and life in the cold; life in Muslim and Arab worlds with life in Westernised countries; sexual freedom and sexual inhibitions are all excellent.

We are plunged into the life of a fallible human being. The lead character Asya is vain and given to over-analysing situations, as well as coming across as more than a little self obsessed. But she's a character that you can get to know and learn to like as if she were a real living and breathing person.

Soueif's attention to the details of a person's life, their likes and dislikes, how they interact with others and what makes them tick brings this whole novel to life. This makes our journey with Asya into her sexless marriage and the catalogue of little comments and events that make that marriage turn into an otherwise bizarre situation, plausible. We also go with her as she finds sexual liberation with the belief that it could have come about that way. She doesn't exactly handle her personal circumstances very well, but then again, in real life, we mess up too.

[Steve Middendorf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Above all this is a love story. An intelligent, headstrong girl comes of age and wants sexual fulfillment and romantic love with the man of her dreams. We see how this plays out in the Middle East.

The setting is Egypt from 1967 to 1980. We see the humiliation of the war with Israel, the relationship with the Palestinians, the politics of peace process with Sadat and we see the people withstand the crushing weight of a repressive political regime.

More than that we see what it means to be a an educated Egyptian woman, with modern needs and desires locked in a patriarchal society. More than anything, this book is about sexual politics in Egypt: the way that cultural institutions (such as family) enforce expectations on the role of women in society.

I read Middle East historical fiction because I want to understand the Middle East from viewpoint of the people who live there. Most good books are like taking a college course on a particular subject. This book was like sitting a PhD on Egyptian history and culture: exhausting!!

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first book I ever read about the Middle East, written by an Arab author. Were I to reread this now, I would probably tell you about about sexual and class politics and identity in post-colonial Egypt, but I confess I have not read this book in quite some time and writing this I'm rather tempted to pick it up again, just to see what it's like. Yet doing so endangers my memories of it, of realizing that not every book I read about the Middle East must be Serious Works of Nonfiction and Theory, but could also be coming-of-age tales of women who I could identify and relate to, that books about the Middle East could be as soap opera-y as Thomas Hardy novels. Like Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero (I challenge you to find another review that likens Woman at Point Zero to In the Eye of the Sun) this book is about women--not the cliche women in harems, not the equally cliche women as passive objects to domineering savage men, but women living their lives as all of us women do. This book changed my life.