Eine Liebe in Kairo - Lovestory in Cairo, according to my own free translation - by Amir Hassan Cheheltan translated into German from Farsi by Jutta Himmelreich was on my to-read list for a couple of months.
I´ve read and reviewed previously works by Cheheltan, which has an audience in Germany and his novels are translated into German relatively shortly after publishing. He may have some interesting takes - although I often don´t share them, such ideas and interpretation are representative for a certain intellectual environment.
Eine Liebe in Cairo is a mixture of love story and recent historical fiction. The Iranian diplomat - unnamed - is representing the young Shah Pahlavi in Cairo, a capital city with a specific importance for the Persian dynasty. His missions are to convince Queen Fawsia to return to the his husband, the Shah, and to return to Iran of the corpse of the old Shah Pahlavi who died in exile in South Africa. The action takes place in october 1947, when the Middle East boils facing the steps towards the creation of the State of Israel, events punctuating the diplomatic background of the story.
Meanwhile, he is falling into an obsessive love with a lady he met first 15 years ago, a Jewish convert to Islam married with an Indian philosopher. She is part of the love episode in the story that is supposed to fuel the narrative. There is no happy ending, as in the end, the diplomat will leave Cairo, at the end of an unaccomplished mission.
Despite some writing accomplishments, Eine Liebe in Kairo was for me one of those books that despite the relatively coherent individual episodes is the lack of genuine connection between the different layers. I am not very interested in novels with a solid nonfiction background but missing the story.
I may have had several expectations about this book but in the end I was disappointed. Time to start another book, life is too short for regrets.
Rating: 2 stars
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