326
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Need help learning how to read books again
(lemmy.ml)
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The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a delightful work of art
(www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com)
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Short but thrilling. We started this year with a bang! Quite literally. A prosecutor wakes up in the middle of the night to the voice of an officer reporting to him the shooting of a villager, marking the beginning of a thrilling and mysterious crime investigation amidst the perturbation of the administration. As the title of the book implies, the author narrates his life as a prosecutor appointed in the Egyptian countryside in the form of a diary extending over twelve days. This is not a simple work of imagination, but it was inspired by the author's actual career and experiences. Critics I found online regarded the book as a satirical work, but one, instead of laughing, becomes quickly saddened if not enraged by the social crisis which the world fell into. While the book's main focus is the crime investigation, many themes emerge in the background:
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Contrast between Civilization and Nomadism: The prosecutor, who grew up in the the city, severely criticized the countryside and the peasants that he had to work with on a daily basis during his perpetual, hard work. Sometimes he describes them as being brittle, at other times uncouth; sometimes as ignorant, and at other times backward. The author of the book was born to a peasant father and an aristocratic mother, which explains the clash between the two worlds in his thoughts and works.
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Apathy of jurists: The prosecutor's reaction to the gendarme's report of the crime was relief because the investigation won't take much time, for the perpetrator is unknown and the dying victim is unconscious, and so he considered the matter a “simple incident.” The indifference of the prosecutor clearly appears as well as that of the gendarmes and other specialists who repetitively see the atrocity and ugliness of the human corpse after its death, becoming only as valuable as any other inanimate object like the pieces of wood and the molds of clay.
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Rigidity of the law: this is the result of imposing foreign ideas and principles on the rural society. In one of the entries, the writer told the story of the illiterate peasant who pleaded his innocence against a judgment in absentia. The judge rejected his request because the deadilne to do so expired: “ignorance of the law excuses not.” The litigant marveled with disapproval, as how could he, a simple-minded creature that had never set foot beyond the borders of his village, have known the code of Napoleon. Similar events occur repetitively in this book to the point they become a norm. Although the prosecutor in his diary mocks this situation, he doesn't refrain from acting in the same way in his cases.
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Administrative corruption: The system imposed by the state does not apply to the state, nor to its administrative bodies and employees protected by nepotism. The surprise inspections of the police stations and the court treasury is mere ink on paper, and holding administrative officials accountable is unheard of. The prosecutor expresses his loathing for the kleptocratic agents who were appointed in the capital, while he rots in the arid countryside due to his lack of strong relations with the senior politicians.
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Inheritance of oppression: The prosecutor recalls the humiliating treatment of the sheriff to the mayor of one of the districts, knowing that the latter will carry with him the same humiliation and will bequeath it in his turn to his subordinates and from the subordinate to to the lower subordinate and so on until it reaches “the core of the population”.
This is the comedy (or tragedy) of the Egyptian legal system as recounted by Al-Hakim.
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