Short novel set in SAITAMA (Japan)
London observed through the eyes of an Egyptian
5th March 2025
On the Greenwich Line by Shady Lewis, London observed through the eyes of an Egyptian.
Translated by Katharine Halls.
This is a short novel of 170 pages or so, written with authority and humour. It is beautifully translated by Katharine Halls and provides a couple of hours of thought-provoking, amusing – and at times – dark reading.
The novel opens as the narrator is dealing with a request from Egypt to retrieve a young Syrian man’s body in London. The young man passed away at the age only twenty and he has no family members in the city who could arrange a funeral. It is a favour that, despite reluctance, he will carry out. It will eventually take place at Nunhead Cemetery, one of London’s “Magnificent Seven”.
As the cogs slowly start to turn on the burial procedure, he continues with his day job. He is a housing officer in local government and he is caught up in the vagaries of sifting through policy announcements and then acting accordingly. There seems to be neither rhyme nor reason in the issued edicts and the paperwork keeps him well occupied. The job has all kinds of moments and stresses, “ …clearing the rubble of society, sometimes looking for survivors underneath it and other times colluding to keep them buried…”. And then one day, together with his colleague Kayode, he attends a housing meeting with “Service User A”, which has unexpected consequences with which the two have to grapple.
London comes through very well: “The wisdom behind the Victorian terraced was that orderly, symmetrical city streets would inspire a humble and compliant temperament in their residents. The price, whether by design or as an unintended side effect, was tedium….”
This is an inventive story that is told by a gifted raconteur, an author who wryly observes life amongst London’s incomers, beautifully set in the context of the narrator’s backstory. He also keeps a beady eye on the British, with all their tea drinking and social dilemmas.
A couple of hours’ reading very well spent.
Tina for the TripFiction Team
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