7.2 /10 1 Votes
Country United Kingdom Pages 278 pp Dewey Decimal 823/.914 21 Originally published 1988 Publisher Viking Press Genres Fiction, Novel | 3.6/5 Goodreads Publication date 1988 ISBN 0-8050-5203-8 LC Class PR6063.A438 E35 1997 OCLC 36017176 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988) is the third novel by English author Hilary Mantel, who won the Man Booker Prize in 2009. It concerns the Englishwoman Frances Shore, who moves to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to live with her husband, an engineer.
Based on Mantel's own experiences in Saudi Arabia, the novel explores different peoples' struggles with the contrast in cultures, including those of people of different Islamic cultures, and the misunderstandings between the Saudis and Westerners, as well as between women and men. Mantel felt the book anticipated later developments in the culture clash between Islam and the West: “I felt a bit frustrated because as events developed, I had a sort of I-told-you-so feeling.”
Reception
Reviewing the book in The Spectator, Anita Brookner wrote of a "tightness of control" and that a "peculiar fear emanates from this narrative."
On the book's American publication in 1997, one reviewer described it as "a bold, searingly honest and uncompromising novel" while another praised "Mantel's knack for leavening her weighty themes with seductive narrative strategies."