Over-long Nile

Press, 18 March 1985, Page 20

Over-long Nile

Nile. By Laurie Devine. Arrow, 1984. 679 pp. $8 (paperback). Born in a backward little village on the upper Nile, and taught by her mother to love and respect the river, young Mona is too sickly to survive, unless she is taken to the healtheir air of Alexandria. There her mother takes her — and there both enter the employ of the rich al-Masris, who think of themselves as Egyptian, but who are of Jewish descent. The lineage settles the family’s fate, when Mona is a beautiful young woman, abd the Arabs are rising against colonial rule and, later, against the Jews. Mona fjills in love with Youssef, the handsome young sion of the al-Masri family, but their love is doomed by the bitterness and savagery around them. -The tale is well-written, but a sympathetic editor would have cut out at least 150 pages. Although the unhappy History of the area is well encompassed in “Nile,” many other books have done the same. — A. J. Petre.