The Republic of False Truths

Written By Linda Malek

The Republic of False Truths by Alaa Al Aswany
Reviewed by Linda
📕📕📕📕

It’s January 2011, and political unrest across North Africa, or as we now call it, the “Arab Spring” is upon us. Feigned stability under dictatorship or uncertainty that comes with protest?

These are the questions Al Aswany forces the reader to reckon with as he recounts a recent and lived experience of many Egyptians.
Where the author’s previous work has always looked critically at Egyptian society, each work of fiction has been based on a time before now. There is a shift in Al Aswany’s writing here - it is reflective of a failed revolution and thus, a prerequisite of the current state of affairs. Don’t be surprised to learn that this book is banned in the Arab world. 🧐🙄

Nevertheless, Al Aswany continues to do what he does best and lets the reader step into the lives of Egyptians from all corners of society around the time of the 2011 revolution. With the usual well-seasoned satire and critique, we meet people in support of and opposed to the revolution: corrupt army generals, religious officials, aristocrats, your average Joe, students and the working class who all have their own vision for the mother country.

The critical readers among us will say that there are lots of tropes in this novel. They’d be right but even as they make you wince, they’re still relevant.

We all know how this story ends (or begins), and I would’ve appreciated a further chapter or two about where our characters go to.
Overall, I highly recommend this book to those into political fiction or interested in Egypt, especially where based on true events.

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

Previous

The Dangerous Kingdom of Love
Next

The Love Hypothesis