Mark Rizk Farag > Recent Status Updates

Genuinely didn't expect this book to be so lighthearted and hilarious 😂

So many names, so many obscure in world words and terms. So few reasons to care.

A lot to think about. The logic in this book isn't perfect at all

We are off to a good start!

How I've missed flowery prose, dragons and political fantasy 😭

Profound and poignant. But it doesn't have a plot thus far 😅

Quite heavy handed so far 😅

Fun so far, nothing too profound

Absolutely profound so far.

The scary thing about books like this is that while they are short, they lead to so much introspection and so many practical things to apply that they can seem overwhelming!

The book is very racist and misogynistic so far (somehow more than I'd expect for a book written by a white man in 1952?)... But also very dull.

Calling your wife mother is also very very cringe

Extremely insightful and accessible so far 👏🏼.

For what is probably the most racist book I've read in my life this far (I have legitimately learned new slurs), that last chapter provided an extremely unexpected and rather ahead of its time commentary on the experiences of POC immigrants, stereotyping, biculturalism and acculturation.

Which begs the question, if the author is capable of this, why do we get this alongside the rest of the book 😂

Steinbeck - 'he was descended from great Kings, as all Irish men are' - boyyyy those Irish people are lying to you 😂.

Steinbeck (paraphrased) 'We have no idea why this guy left Ireland, maybe it was over a girl.'
Left Ireland? In the late 19th to 20th century? Why would anyone do such a thing! Must have been a girl 😂

And in this episode of undercover bosses, Odysseus, lord of Ithaca is disguised by the goddess Athena as a beggar visiting his swine herd!

Ah yes the swineherd is a bootlicker who upholds all of the customs valuable to the nobility and upper echelons of Ancient Greek society - Xenia, Religiousity, love and respect for the powerful and so on!

First sympathetic depiction of a member of the LGBTQ+ community ive read in a book from the MENA region 😭

'By no means have I faith, I am a shrewd fellow by nature and as such always have great difficulty in making the movement of faith, though I wouldn't attach any importance in itself to a difficulty which by overcoming it, brings a fellow no further than the most ordinary and simple-minded person has already reached without difficulty.'

It's got all that ATLA magic 😭👌🏽

The books topic is wildly Interesting. It's main character is fascinating.

But instead of focusing on Dhiya, it insists on tangenting to a far less interesting subsection of the plot which has no narrative context and assumes knowledge of early Islamic history.

Very engaging so far, and surprisingly vulnerable.