Pillars of Salt Book

Διαβάστε και την ελληνική κριτική στις βιβλιοαλχημείες.

I have this quirk when it comes to international literature. Some criteria let's say.
I want to read for example a book from Jordan.
To be an 100% Jordanian book the author has to be born in Jordan, to live in Jordan, write in Arabic, and write about Jordan.

With this book we are at 60-70%.
Fadia Faqir was born in Jordan but now lives in Durham, UK.
She writes about Jordan but in English.
So I might need to read one more from Jordan, originally written in Arabic by an author who mainly lives in Jordan.

Ito Ogawa's book The Restaurant of Love Regained was at 100%.
Ito Ogawa was born in Japan, lives in Japan, the book was written in Japanese, and takes place in Japan.

All these of course are statistical quirks. They make a book more authentic but that doesn't downgrade in no way the importance of a book like Faqir's «Pillars of Salt» if it's at 60%.

Kazuo Ishiguro was 5 when he arrived in the UK, hence he is a British author.
Fadia Faqir was 28 when she arrived in the UK, so that makes her both British and Jordanian author.

But as I said these are interesting facts and quirks for a registrar kind of person like me, one who always keeps records of births, descents, and dates.

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Okay enough with the above, let's move to the actual review of the book.

It is a tale that takes place in Jordan during the early 20th century.
We have two narratives. The present and the past.
The present takes place in a mental hospital and two women narrate to each other their lives.
Their narrations of the past comprise the second narrative, that of the past.
There's also a third narrative which is more symbolic and brief, from the point of view of an omniscient male unnamed yet misogynist narrator, a narrative that interrupts once in a while the main narratives of the two women.

Two women that suffered for different reasons.
A book in which we see the lives of women and Jordanians in general during the British Protectorate (Emirate of Transjordan).
One more country that the British were brutally "protecting" under their imperialistic wings.

Even though this book was a first time experience about life in Jordan for me, I found it a bit slow and again, just like the previous book (Carol) I wasn't able to connect and feel anything more than sympathy for the protagonists.