Sugar Street (novel)

[2] The family consists of Ahmad Abd al-Jawad's two sons, Yasin, a sensual man, and the younger and more studious Kamal; two daughters, the widow Aisha and the married Khadija, now a mother; and five grandchildren.

Unmarried Kamal visits the same brothel his father used to go to, but the setting has shifted from the patriarchal home on Palace Walk to the house occupied by Khadija and her husband on Sugar Street.

There, Khadija's two sons occupy opposite political positions: Abd al-Muni'm has started adhering to fundamental Islamic principles, while his brother Ahmad is becoming more and more involved with Communism, resulting in ongoing discussions about the current situation and the future of the country.

Kamal, who is modeled on the author, displays an intellectual and moral paralysis, a continuation of his trajectory in the earlier novels; he remains unable to reconcile Western ideals and Islamic thought or to handle the changes wrought by colonialism and World War II.

[3] According to the critic for Kirkus Reviews, this generation of the family "makes a more muted impression than the first two", and they place the writing "in the great tradition of the 19th-century novel from Balzac to Buddenbrooks.