In the Tavern of Life and Other Stories.

Boullata, Issa J.

Tawfiq al-Hakim. William Maynard Hutchins, tr. Boulder, Co. Rienner. 1998. vi + 232 pages. $38 ($18.95 paper). ISBN 0-89410-648-1 (649-X paper).

Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898-1987) was best known for his plays and perhaps least for his short stories. Yet he did write in several genres, often blurring the boundaries between them. In the Tavern of Life is a collection of twenty-seven of his short stories, written between 1927 and 1984 and culled from a dozen of his works. It is the first collection of his stories to be published in English, beautifully rendered by William Maynard Hutchins, who also translated al-Hakim's novel Return of the Spirit (1990; see WLT 65:4, p. 758) and Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy (see WLT 65:4, p. 759, and 68:1, p. 203), among other works.

The short stories in this collection are well chosen and clearly demonstrate al-Hakim's knack for lively dialogue and clever plots, as well as his appreciation for this genre's condensation and concentration. The majority of them range in length from four to ten pages, although there are a few longer pieces. Al-Hakim's short stories are not noted for their character sketches or their analyses of personal relationships but rather, like many of his plays, for their philosophic content and their defense of what he considered to be lofty and noble ideals for civilized society. They are presented in a lighthearted manner, often as events supposedly experienced by their author. But whether they are inspired by Egyptian social conditions or by readings in the literary tradition, they consistently offer food for thought by their underlying serious analysis of ideas, even when they are comical, and by their critical views of reality.

The stories are arranged in the chronological order of their publication. The first selection, titled "The Artistes," portrays an ensemble of four female Egyptian artistes in third class on a train bound from Cairo to Alexandria to perform at a wedding in the holy month of Ramadan. Pretending to be fasting to the man who bids them farewell, they accept coffee and cigarettes from four men in the compartment, who, also pretending to be fasting, ogle them, then engage them in conversation and beg them to play their instruments and sing for them as consoling entertainment while the train makes its way northward. Pretty soon the entire train rocks with excitement!

The final story of the collection, "The Case of the Twenty-First Century," contains criticism of America as a capitalist country run by multinationals and the military-industrial complex responsible for wars in the world in order to keep American shareholders reaping high profits and American workers enjoying high wages. This criticism comes out in a New York court where four Vietnam veterans, graduates of Harvard, are being prosecuted for an apparent attempt to blow up the Statue of Liberty. They defend themselves by saying they only wanted to have a trial in order to publicize American depravity. The author, attending the trial as the guest of an American journalist and as an observer studying American life, returns to Egypt before the verdict is rendered and writes the story after he recovers from an illness caused by American food!

Between the first story and the last, the others entertain in such modes as science fiction, folk fantasy, allegory, and Egyptian tranche de vie, always making the reader pause and ponder.

Issa J. Boullata McGill University, Montreal