The Story Archive

Adrift on the Nile

Naguib Mahfouz · 1966 CE · Novel · Arabic · Contemporary

A senior clerk who long ago stopped caring what his ministry does spends every night on a houseboat moored on the Nile with the same company — a critic, an actress, a lawyer, a translator — passing the water pipe and talking until the talk has no weight left in it. A young woman journalist comes aboard meaning to write them up, and stays. Nasser is said to have been handed the book by an offended minister and to have declined to ban it.

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Attributes

Genre
SatirePsychological
Theme
Existential AbsurdityIsolation & AlienationIndividual vs Society
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Anti-HeroEverymanWise Fool
Plot structure
EpisodicCircularUnreliable Narrator
Symbol / motif
The RiverThe Ship / BoatThe Moon
Conflict
vs Selfvs Society
Mode / tone
IronicAbsurdist
Culture / tradition
Arabic

Closest analogues