[Heteronym]

Naguib Mahfouz borrows the structure from William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury to tell the same story from four points of view. Abbás, a young mediocre playwright, finally produces a play that someone wants to produce. The producer believes in its success because the play is clearly autobiographical and full of scandals surrounding Abbás and his family.

We follow four first-person narratives – Tariq, an actor who loved Tahiya, Abbás wife, and thinks the playwright killed her and their son; Karam, Abbás’ father, who despises his son; Halima, Abbás mother, who put all her hopes in her son and feels betrayed about the way he portrays her in the play; and of course Abbás.

The four voices fall in place like a jigsaw puzzle, slowly describing Abbás unhappy childhood, his growing hatred of Karam and the slow falling apart with his mother, his attempts at becoming a playwright, and the marriage with Tahiya that nearly destroys his artistic ambitions.

The novel also explores the line between fiction and reality, and the toll an artist must pay who wishes to portray his own life in his art. The question arises whether it’s morally right to change facts about peoples’ lives for the sake of art and shows how that can affect their lives outside the work of art.

Finally, Wedding Song is a beautifully and concisely-written short novel, in which not a word is out of place or in excess. Naguib Mahfouz puts an entire lifetime within less then 200 pages and paints four vivid portraits of four distinct people, with their own voices, prejudices, ambitions, losses and hatreds.

I seldom read this author, but when I do I always marvel at his talent.