Essentially a novel about Alexandria, with three Englishmen teaching in the Egypt of King Farouk. With titillating adventures and misadventures the academic year is entertaining and perhaps a bit educating in its own way. ( )

While darkly comic at points, I do not think this novel merits the "Lucky Jim in Egypt" tag that's plastered on its cover. It has none of the humane warmth of Lucky Jim, and I think it was lumped with Amis's book because its release happened to coincide with a vogue for "angry young men" novels and because reviewers in the 50s were at a loss how to categorize it. It is funny, but only if you are able to find the humor in living in a hostile police state at the tail end of a crumbling empire. Enright's Alexandria is filled with unease, caught between western influences and growing Islamicism.

All that makes it an interesting social document, but for me it was not a compelling piece of fiction. I found the characters undifferentiated except by cliche and couldn't really come to care about anything that happened in the book. There are sublime scenes of intentionally Kafkaesque wrangling with the Egyptian authorities, but it all feels like window dressing. The two main English characters, Packet and Bacon, merged in my mind, as similar to one another as the rashers in a Packet of Bacon. ( )

"Lucky Jim in Alexandria"