Status
Available
Genres
Publication
Swallow Press (1983), Edition: 1, 158 pages
Description
From Sleep Unbound portrays the life of Samya, an Egyptian woman who is taken at age 15 from her Catholic boarding school and forced into a loveless and humiliating marriage. Eventually sundered from every human attachment, Samya lapses into despair and despondence, and finally an emotionally caused paralysis. But when she shakes off the torpor of sleep, the sleep of avoidance, she awakens to action with the explosive energy of one who has been reborn.
User reviews
LibraryThing member lriley
Chedid is an Egyptian born and raised French writer. This novel tells the story of Samya a young girl taken out of a catholic convent school at 14 and forced into an arranged marriage with a much older 45 year old man named Boutros. With marriage Samya is taken away from the city she's grown up in
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and is settled in a rural village one in which Boutros is a prominent citizen. Boutros is very much a tyrant not only with her but the people that work for him. To him being more successful means being better than those less so and Samya as his wife is expected to be cognizant of her position. Samya is also expected to provide him with sons as women in this world are definitely looked down upon. Samya though has problems conceiving and though eventually after some 10 years she finally does it turn out to be to the great disappointment of her husband to be a girl which she names Mia. Mia becomes for her the love and affection she never got from her own materialistic family and the antidote to the repulsion she feels towards her husband and his sister Rachida who have always treated her like an object. At age 6 however Mia contracts typhoid fever. Boutros (ever and always econmomical) puts off medical treatment until it is too late to save her. In the aftermath of that the hysterical Samya has a emotional-physical breakdown and one day awakes to find she has lost the function of her legs. Boutros calls in his sister to fill in the gap and the two make the succeeding years as miserable as they can for Samya who finally snaps one day when Boutros forgeting to take his pistol with him on his rounds comes back and is shot and killed by Samya. Not that I condone violence (and this is only fiction as far as I know) but even so one might think good riddance. He was believable in his petty meanness and overall wooden personality much the same as his sister. Chedid as a writer has a fairly interesting style. She has a way of merging objects or things into or out of a personality which she often uses to prolong moments of tension or despair. The story itself is not anything extraordinary in terms of plot but it is well told and described. Show Less
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
158 p.; 8.38 inches
ISBN
080400837X / 9780804008372