Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth by Naguib MahfouzMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
"This is a story of innocence, of deception, and infinite grief."
AKHENATEN is a very short read about the mysterious monotheist pharoah who chose a loving and, dare I say, "Christian" way of life, thirteen centuries before Christ.
"Could order be achieved by the exercise of love alone?"
It's impossible not to think of Akira Kurosawa's story, "In A Grove," when thinking of this Mahfouz novella. Both works feature different characters giving varying points of view about events.
"My king knew no evil. Perhaps that was his tragedy."
Was Akhenaten mad? Or simply a visionary whose ideas were beyond his time? Mahfouz leaves it to us to decide.
I would have rated this book higher had I not previously read his 3 novellas on Ancient Egypt: Khufu's Wisdom, Rhadopis of Nubia and Thebes at War. I remember being stunned with how immersive those novels were, and how grand the language was. Could something have been lost with the translation? Perhaps. All four of these novels had different translators.
Nevertheless, this book is still interesting, if only to force us to reflect on how we acquire the faith that we currently have, and whether we would have the courage of our convictions to persist, should we somehow believe differently from everyone else.
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