عما يسأل By P.H. Newby

P.H. Newby ´ 7 characters

3.5 stars. An interesting, engaging, memorable novel about Townrow, a British man in his 30s, who is a delusional, unpredictable, unreliable, odd character who is grappling with his own morality and identity. Set in 1956 in Port Said, Egypt. President Nasser of Egypt has taken control of the Suez Canal from the British and French. The British and French respond by bombing Egypt's main cities.

Townrow, who has been requested to travel to Port Said from England by the widow of his deceased friend, Elie Khoury. Elie was 60 years old when he died. Townrow initially tries to persuade the widow of Elie Khoury to sign over all her assets to Townrow as he isn't a Jew and the Egyptians are less likely to confiscate property of an Irishman. Townrow reasons that he is Irish as his mother is Irish. Townrow meets and falls in love Leah Strauss, an American who is in Port Said to see her dying father. Leah is married. Her husband is sick and in a hospital in the USA.

In this time Britain comes to reassess its place in the world. Townrow too, must reassess the life rules he has been living under. A worthwhile read due to the engaging plot. It's not an easy read as the novel shifts suddenly from the past to present and present to past, with Townrow's account of what happens, being unreliable. For example, sometimes as a reader you are not sure whether the facts being related are actually a dream of Townrow's or whether Townrow's account is more wishful thinking rather than reality.

Winner of the 1969 Inaugural Booker Prize. عما يسأل The inaugural Booker Prize winning novel from Newby. Way different than what I was expecting, but in a good way. Steeped in mystery because of the narrator's memory issues; however, the story maintains its appeal and I felt it never got so entirely strange that I couldn't follow the plot line. Rest assured everything is revealed in the end. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Recommended! عما يسأل Most people read this book because it was the first winner of the Man Booker prize in 1969 and that is why my book club chose to read it too. Getting your hands on a copy of this out-of-print tome is not easy. You can find it used for ungodly sums of money. I saw it going for between $40 - $50, but save your cash and get it through inter-library loan.

Since I had time to kill while I waited (because inter-library loan is not the speediest of demons), I checked out some reviews and basically they all boil down to No one understand why this book won an award. Reading so many negative reviews may have tainted my reading, but it is honestly difficult to slog through. I couldn't finish it and many of my fellow book clubbers weren't able to get to the end either.

You know how Built to Spill sang:

No one wants to hear
what you dreamt about
unless you dreamt about them
don't let that stop you
tell them anyway
and you can make it up as you go


Not bad advice if you think about it. Well P.H. Newby really took it to heart. The idea is cleverly executed. I could really hear someone telling me, So I had this dream and this guy was there, but he was dead, but not really. So I went drinking with him. And then I got out of this car and could see everything! I could just focus on a point and see it all. Maybe I am Irish. This type of narration was ok for the first 100 pages, but then it quickly turns into not-for-pleasure reading.

Sadly, I missed the book discussion, but one of the book clubbers passed Sam Jordison's review that gave me a different take on the events. Sam's take is that the blow to Townrow's head caused his confusion. Which is a totally plausible idea, but Newby dropped so many references to dreams throughout the book that I am sticking with my assertion that Something to Answer for won the Man-Booker prize because it was the original And then he woke up and it was all a dream book.
عما يسأل The first Booker winner...

It’s 1956, and Townrow has returned to Port Said, a place he first visited when serving in the army in WW2. This time he’s there at the request of Ethel Khoury, the English widow of an Egyptian man who had befriended Townrow on his earlier visit. Mrs Khoury believes Elie, her husband, was murdered and wants Townrow to... well, actually I have no idea what she wanted Townrow to do, so, moving swiftly on...! Anyway, Townrow is a bit of a small-time crook and his plan is to con Mrs Khoury out of the possessions the wealthy Elie left her. But on his first night in Port Said, Townrow is attacked and is left with a head injury which makes his memories confused, and then Nasser, the President of Egypt, announces he is nationalising the Suez Canal – one of the last outposts of the dying British Empire. When the British and French decide they must retaliate to keep the Canal under Western control, the situation in Port Said will soon be as confused as the thoughts in Townrow’s head, though not quite as confused as this poor reader.

At the halfway point I would happily have thrown this in the bin but it redeemed itself a little in the last quarter when finally Townrow begins to live in the present rather than in his jumbled thoughts and memories. It won the first ever Booker Prize in 1969, beating Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark amongst others. I imagine that lots of people decide to read the Booker Prize winners in order, get halfway through this one, and decide not to bother...

Sifting through the general incomprehensibility of it, Newby is satirising the British imperial mindset, and examining the effect of the Suez crisis on the British psyche, I think. It’s clearly aiming at humour some of the time, and even veers towards farce occasionally, but not very successfully – it’s too messy. Although not terribly moral himself, Townrow has a profound belief in the decency of the British in their dealings with their citizens, allies and colonial dependencies. The first sign of a crack in this belief is when he is accosted at the airport by a Jew from Hungary who insists that in 1942 the British deliberately failed to warn Hungarian Jews not to board the trains that would take them to the Nazi death camps. Townrow denies this could possibly have happened (did it? I don’t know), but the question remains in his fractured mind. Then when the British bomb Cairo after the annexation of the Canal, he is shocked to the core. This is not the way the Britain in which he believes would act, apparently. (I find that strange, because of all the things we did in the Empire era, was that really the worst? Perhaps it’s a time dilation thing – to Newby it was pretty much current affairs; to me it’s part of a long history.)

The underlying suggestion, I think, is that it was the Suez Crisis that changed the British attitude from hubristic imperialist pride to the kind of breast-beating shame that followed in the second half of the twentieth century. Again he may well be right, although I’d have thought the loss of India was a bigger milestone on that journey. To me what Suez represents is the British realisation that it no longer dominated the world, politically or militarily, and that America had become the new superpower. So shame, yes, but of our weakness in the present rather than of our actions in the past. But, and I freely admit I didn’t have a clue what Newby was trying to say most of the time, that wasn’t what I felt he was suggesting. However, I’m pretty sure Townrow’s head injury, confusion and loss of faith in British decency is symbolic of what Newby saw as the effects on the national psyche of the sudden collapse of the Empire after the war.

So all very interesting and just my kind of thing. Unfortunately, the rambling confusion of Townrow’s thoughts, the complete unreliability of his memory, the constant shifting back and forwards in time, all left me grinding my teeth in frustration. It should never be quite this hard to work out what an author is trying to say. But more than that, the way Townrow’s memories keep shifting means that there’s no plot to grab onto and no characterisation to give the book any form of emotional depth. Who are these people? Every time Townrow tells us about Mrs Khoury, for example, she is different than she was the last time. His mistress, Leah, shifts about from everything between being the tragic wife of a mentally ill husband to being some kind of sadistic dominatrix, and all points in-between. I didn’t have a clue who she really was even as I turned the last page, but I’m almost positive she was symbolic of... something. Townrow himself is rather better drawn, but unfortunately is entirely unlikeable – even his partial redemption rings false. And either Townrow or Newby, perhaps both, have an unhealthy habit of referring to women as bitches or sluts, and clearly one of them at least finds the most important aspect of any woman to be her breasts. Well, it was the ‘60s, I suppose.

Overall I found this far too vague and frustrating to be enjoyable. It does become clearer at the end, which raised it slightly from the 1-star rating it was heading towards, and made me regret that Newby hadn’t chosen to tell the story in a more straightforward way throughout. He clearly had interesting things to say, but the execution doesn’t match the ambition. I can’t wholeheartedly recommend this one. 2½ stars for me, so rounded up.

www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com عما يسأل It is always interesting to read Booker winners but I have rather mixed feelings about this one (the first). At face value it reads like a comic picaresque dream story, a confusing narrative set in Egypt during the Suez crisis, but it addresses wider issues of responsibility, national identity and the end of the British empire. عما يسأل

عما

A bizarre and kafta like book. Townrow is a conman who after being beaten and left naked on a Port Said beach develops a conscience. However, he is also obsessed with helping his dead friends widow. All this happens during the Suez crisis after Nassar nationalises the Suez Canal.

Townrow doesn’t know what he is imagining or what is real. An affair with Leah, gun smuggling to Cyprus, seeing his dead friend, interrogation by Egyptian and British all add to a surreal story.

The story is in a way Monty Python and entertaining with the ending leaving you guessing or wondering what happens. It reminds me of another Man Booker winner the famished road where the author wakes up and we find it’s all a dream. However, this is different with all the characters unlikeable. It was interesting to find out more about the Suez Crisis and when France and England were no longer super powers after America ordered them out of Egypt. عما يسأل This novel is set in Egypt in 1956 as Nassar nationalized the management of the Suez Canal, revoking the rights of the British and French. The US and Britain had previously backed out of a commitment to help finance the Aswan Dam because some of Nassar’s recent actions were too friendly towards the Soviet Union. The nationalization led to the Suez Canal Crisis in which Israel invaded Egypt and Great Britain and France joined with the goal of regaining control of the Suez Canal and overthrowing Nassar. The novel is not historical fiction; instead, Egypt in 1956 functions as a backdrop for the story.

Timenow, a British or Irish citizen, who had previously been in Egypt as a soldier, returns after the death of a friend, Elie Khoury, to help or possibly swindle Elie’s wife, Mrs. K. You never really know which stories about Timenow to believe or what his intentions are, and after suffering a head injury early on, neither does Timenow. Events are presented in waves, stepping forward in time, moving back and then forward again. Which stories are true, which are dreams, what is just rampant imagination in the absence of solid memory? As the novel progresses, more is revealed, but nothing ever becomes certain. I thoroughly enjoyed the mixture of confusion and possibility.

The complexity of the historical events is matched by the human. The characters have layers and depth, just as the time and place does. I know some readers did not like trying to discern what was truth and what was imagination or dreams, so I can’t recommend this to just anyone, but read it if you think you like this kind of puzzle. As I read this novel, it reminded me of Warlight by Michael Ondaatje and A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone, both of which I loved and in which uncertainty and possibilities play a significant role.

Something To Answer For was the first winner of the Booker Award in 1969. I have not read anything else yet by P.H. Newby, but if this book is an indicator, he never achieved the recognition he deserved.



عما يسأل I chose this one as I was curious to learn more about the very first Booker prize ever awarded, as well as learning more about the Suez Canal crisis of 1956.

The writers workshop rule for critiquing others' work is that one has to start with saying something nice. Here, Newby has a phenomenal sense of place. I truly felt as though I were watching a movie; moreover, he is very good with characters. Despite my issues with the plot, I felt motivated to continue to see how they turned out.

The plot ... showed promise in the first part of the novel. It was an exotic location at a 10th time with interesting characters, let's see what happens! Unfortunately, the unreliable main character took over in a somewhat paranoid fantasy sense, along with the action shifting to a surreal, Kafka-esque feel. I became less and less able to get a grasp on events, a literal 'fun house mirrors' effect that proved frustrating indeed. The inconclusive (to me at any rate) ending seemed symbolic, but of what? I hadn't nearly enough interest to think about it.

Three stars because Newby could write. I can see how it won the Prize, being more proximate in time to the events, as well as judges who approached the story from a different angle, shall we say. I could recommend the book to a more patient reader with access to a library or cheap used copy.
عما يسأل Townrow saw himself floating in and out of this dream for the rest of his life, and each time there would be a new twist. Next time there would be no nuns and the warship would be American. There would be times when there was a cross on the dead man’s chest and there would be times when there was not. The terrible thing about the form this particular dream took was the longing.

Townrow is a snake that eats his own skin to hide the evidence. He would be the nightmare victim in horror films who dare under the covers for what of the other reality has crossed over. Too bad he is also the bad guy who hasn’t watched to the end. Can he live with himself and his douche bagginess. On Fridays, he is in love with phantom tits and ass. The epic unrequited love of porn magazine biographies. You like what you like to think you’d like if anyone asked you to explain yourself. Townrow describes himself as the guy who has to marry every woman he dates. Today, alone, he feels remorse like the man who has broken his favorite toy. The money was just resting in his account! Back in England, his job is distributing disaster relief funds to himself. He’s always deciding if he has anything to go back to. It’s perfect that he wouldn’t really listen to anyone else because he’s always thinking about his pet fuck-ups (another favorite is a girl he didn’t knock-up and they kicked him out of the seminary anyway. No way it went down how Romeo says). What good would it do to do the right thing, anyway? An old lady he met from his uniform days writes to him that her ancient Lebanese husband has died so Townrow kicks it back to Egypt with dollar signs in his sockets. He tells immigration he is there to marry an old lady for her money. It is interesting to me how Townrow gives himself away when he doesn’t have to. He thinks more than once that he doesn’t know how to behave when he doesn’t know what is expected of him. Townrow can’t be a genial old family friend to the widow if he isn’t sure she likes him and he is not smooth at all about pressuring her to transfer all of her holdings to him. He’s like one of those convicts used to getting away with it because they blamed their pathetic friend. I'm always fascinated by liars who seem to believe their own lies. He gives other officers names and assumes identities. I wanted to know the history between him and these men. There are allusions to an old army incident of getting thrown off a horse. If Townrow was a real man I'd have said shame over being seen thrown from his horse is as much of a motive as stealing Mrs. K’s inheritance. In a paranoid moment, he accuses his obsession, Leah, of having witnessed it. Townrow can’t beat the lawyer’s Jewess daughter Leah into his arms with jealous persistence. Old Townrow thinks more than once that he wishes he was her. I can’t stop thinking about how he wished he was who he loved, like in the hollow where a heart would be is a vampire heart. How he gives himself away goes hand in hand with his paralyzed yearning to be another. I've read theories that Townrow doesn't know what is happening but I read it as a constant belief rewrite of a liar getting used to the taste. Time in ‘Something’ belongs to a madman and events happen out of order. Townrow has conversations with people who had previously disappeared from his sight. Is there blood on his hands or his mind. People he hated are his dearest friends when it suits what he wants to tell himself. It could be possible that they all had it coming and he throws a body off a balcony. He’s on his belly trying to root for himself. Townrow keeps going back to a conversation in the Rome airport with a Jewish man if the English could have warned the Jews about the death trains and didn’t. He decides that he was Irish and off this hook but doesn’t know for sure if his passport is British or not. Townrow hopes that what he says is true and I loved this. Memories of his Irish woman mother returns when shit is going down. Time stops for him, too, when he has these reveries, wounds to nurse. It is the 1956 Suez crisis. Elie is not dead at all to haunt his money schemes. Mrs. K returns every night to the scene of her husband’s supposed murder. It's horrible how their real lives marionette in the backdrop of what Townrow is owed. Leah’s husband is in a mental institution in America. Police come and take people away and then they are back like nothing happened at all like you should watch your own back. I wouldn’t bet on my dog’s life that everything happened as Townrow believes it did, nor would he when he is wanting a new story. It is a long time to spend with a person as slimy as Townrow. I thought it worth it for the dreams of a monster. The monster is always slipping out of his skin and I loved it. Skin watching the slither and remembering. He compares himself to a tiger a lot probably because those predators don't see as their prey. Leah is asking this despicable human man (who may have dug up a dead body to force his widow out of the country in another scam) to meet with her at another time to see her as the normal person she always was, as everyone else who knows her knows her as. Townrow didn’t understand at all. He was always thinking he might be her husband in that institution after all. He would only see her true face if she was his invention after all.


Even after the shower there was enough salt on his skin for him to taste it when he licked his wrist. Or perhaps his tongue was so dry it drew the salt blood. The air was as hot as his blood, no more, no less. He saw himself lying on an immense strand, half in and half out of the water. Instead of legs he had scaly flippers. The white waterfall hung in the air, collapsed and ran up the beach to cover his flippers. The air dazzled. عما يسأل There was a time when ‘readability’ was the least important factor which the Booker Prize Jury took into consideration. At least that must’ve been the case back 1969 when they awarded the inaugural Booker to P.H. Newby for his novel ‘Something to Answer For’. Of course back then Booker Prize was some niche award that didn’t even have its ceremony and the winner was informed by post. The jury didn’t have to worry about sparking national debate with their choices.

I see that many reviewers called this novel confusing, disjointed, with unlikeable characters and I’d like to tell them: ‘man up, please!’ Yes, it is difficult but it’s rewarding. It needs time, patience and attention. It’s like that girl who is so hard to turn on but once you dedicate some time to the task and figure it out, she’s fire.

And this book is beautiful and it’s fire. It uses the strangest literary technique of an unreliable third person narrator. The third person is nominal only because in fact we are stuck in Townrow’s, the main character’s, head. And this head receives a blow quite early on and confounds Townrow. We share some of the frustration when he tries to piece everything together and decide who is a friend and who is a foe.
The facts are few: it’s 1956, he came to Egypt to help Mrs Khoury, widow of his friend Ellie. Mrs Khoury believes her husband was murdered, so Townrow is there to offer support, help solve the mystery, con Mrs Khoury into handing all her assets to him…? It’s rather hard to say. The same events are told and retold, they change their significance as Townrow remembers whole new episodes that followed or preceded them.

As Townrow wanders around Port Said in a confused state and falls in love with Leah, a married woman, the history happens in the background. Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal which causes a diplomatic and then a military crisis. This in turn causes a crisis for Townrow, who in his overheated head was only sure of one thing, that the British government was essentially good and just. He suspected that he himself was of rather questionable morals but he could sleep at night because he knew that the people who make all the decisions are free of such flaws.

He painfully realises that it is only his actions he can be somewhat sure of, and that he is responsible for them, because everyone has ‘something to answer for’. So there starts the most bizarre quest for redemption of a character who can’t even remember if he is British or Irish, that is, whether he is a side in the conflict or a neutral observer.

At times Townrow even suspects himself to be American, and occasionally when in her arms, he half wishes to turn out to be the estranged husband of his lover, Leah. P.H.Newby knows how to write romance and sexual tension. I know it seems unlikely when looking at his photos and remembering he was the director of BBC Three, but I am sure he could show a girl a good time. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe I just get turned on by superb writing, gentle, underlying humour, a knack for vivid description, an ear for dialogue… Yes, it could be just me.

In the end of ‘Something to Answer For’ we don’t quite know whether Townrow was good or bad and whether he redeemed himself or quite the opposite, reached the heights of moral corruption. The novel did a circle and took us to the beginning with Townrow coming to the conclusion that what he thought was his past is actually his future.

PH Newby’s main claim to fame might be the fact he was the inaugural Booker Prize winner, something irrelevant back then, but a crown achievement for a writer today. And it’s true I would’ve never got to read ‘Something to Answer For’ if it weren’t for the Booker thing, but now I want to read more Newby’s novels. And I will be kept busy for long as he wrote some twenty-three of them.
عما يسأل

This book is the winner of the inaugural Booker Prize in 1969. It was 1956 and he was in Port Said. About these two facts Townrow was reasonably certain. He had been summoned there, to Egypt, by the widow of his deceased friend, Elie Khoury. Since he was found dead in the street, she is convinced he was murdered, but nobody seems to agree with her. What of Leah Strauss, the mistress? And of the invading British paratroops? Only an Englishman, surely, would take for granted that the British would have behaved themselves. In this weirdly disorienting world, Townrow is forced towards a re-examination of the basic rules by which he has been living his life; and into a realization that he too may have something to answer for. عما يسأل