Penguin
Review by Gabriel Tanguay Ortega
At nearly 800 pages, Ahdaf Soueif’s 1992 debut novel is a rewarding undertaking, a sort of modern Anna Karenina set in mid-20th century Egypt, and later, England. A novel of such length contains many different things, including a changing Arab world and the gender roles within it, East versus West, modernity versus tradition, the influence of literature on maturation, and perhaps most of all, the place sex and sexuality have in our lives, and one’s yearning for sexual fulfillment.
Beautiful and intelligent, Asya is the eldest of three children of two esteemed professors at Cairo University, and part of a large, loving family who live comfortably. We spend more than a decade with Asya over the course of the novel as she comes of age against a tumultuous political backdrop starting with the Six-Day War in 1967. At 17, Asya has already decided on a robust academic future that will ultimately result in earning a Ph.D. Having grown up reading staples of Arab, Western, and world literature, Asya is sensitive, self-reflective, prone to overthinking, and possesses a huge capacity for platonic and romantic love.
Asya finds her first love in spirited, progressive, Westernized Saif, whom she meets at Cairo University. In her naïveté, she is prepared to marry at 18 but waits until she’s further along in her studies at the urging of her family. Saif is patient and understanding, while Asya is restless for sexual intimacy, something she fantasizes about for years. Then, prior to beginning her graduate studies, the couple marries, only to discover they share a surprising lack of sexual chemistry, something that drives a considerable wedge between them. Over time, Saif’s patience turns to platonic passivity. They argue frequently. Saif is frustrated with Asya’s sensitivity, overthinking, and desire for abstract discussion, while Asya is stifled by Saif’s pragmatism and contentment with their sexless relationship.
“She had wanted him so terribly in the beginning. But it all seems to have—to have vanished…I want us to make love. I want us to want to make love.”
The early years of their marriage is marked by sporadic, awkward attempts at lovemaking that only strains their relationship and drives them further apart. Eventually, their own career ambitions place a continent between them as Saif moves around various Arab capitals doing lucrative work in a steadily digitizing world, while Asya moves abroad to the cold, wet north of England for what becomes a tedious Ph.D. Left alone to reflect on the reality of marriage versus her expectations, she takes a lover, and at first we are, dare I say, optimistic? Englishman Gerald is free-spirited, spontaneous, willing to have lofty discussions, and embraces Asya’s desire for physical connection.
While Asya finally comes to know the pleasures of the flesh, the consequences include the turmoil and heartache of one of the most toxic love triangles in modern literature. The last 300 pages of the novel are particularly harrowing as Asya finds herself caught in the middle of two very different men. We wrestle alongside her as she considers that she’s jeopardized the stability of a marriage based initially on genuine affection, however unsatisfying, and that she’s entered into an unhealthy relationship with someone blinded by lust who longs to possess her.
Complex themes abound via an exhaustively detailed narrative brimming with literary references as influential on Asya as they clearly are on her author. (The most referenced work by far is George Elliot’s Middlemarch; full passages are included and Asya seems to hold Middlemarch in a particularly high regard.) In the Eye of the Sun reads like an enduring classic populated with positively vivid characters we come to know intimately through Soueif’s searing scrutinization of their thoughts and actions. We are taken into Asya’s home, life, and heart; we observe her washing dishes, vacuuming, applying makeup, and yearning for the physical connection she’s only read of in books. Soueif makes it easy for us to revel in Asya’s triumphs, brace ourselves when she toils and makes mistakes, and find ourselves equally sympathetic to and profoundly frustrated by the choices she makes. We want Asya to have the earth-shattering orgasm she deserves as much as we want her to come to her senses and refuse to accept less than she deserves from two men who simply cannot serve her. We understand the societal pressure she’s lived under—to be a faithful, supportive, present wife no matter what—as much as we understand that she lives in a changing world where she has the right to live exactly how she wants to. (Echoes of Tolstoy’s Anna and Flaubert’s Emma, anyone?)
As with Tolstoy and Flaubert, characterization is the driving force of the novel. With a touch of the epistolary, we read very personal correspondence between characters, entries into journals in moments of desperation, and we exist like a fly on the wall as Asya has lengthy, private conversations with friends, family members, and lovers. She does not shy away from describing characters at their worst, in familiar moments of utter helplessness, justified and unreasonable anger, and profound grief. Where Soueif takes her characters surprised, sickened, and soothed me, albeit unexpectedly. In that way, she accurately chronicles the unexpected nature of human life and all its facets: beautiful, mundane, and ugly.
Soueif’s portrayal of life in the Arab world from the late 1960s on feels very real. She presents the harsh realities of this period cleverly through the inclusion of historical snippets, interspersed seamlessly throughout the narrative. Important context is provided about the Third and Fourth Arab-Israeli Wars and the rise of Islamism.
Epic in scope, intimate in feeling, cinematic in its construction, In the Eye of the Sun may have been published over thirty years ago but it reads as if penned yesterday. I feel I know Asya the way I know my dearest friends, and I miss her. This is a novel more people should know about and talk about. It is a work as reckless in its honesty as it is generous in its offering of a world, a time, a life so easy to disappear into.
