The Girl with Braided Hair

August 10, 2020
Egyptian writer and art historian Adly frames her delightful if uneven U.S. debut around the restoration of a Napoleonic painting in Cairo after the 2011 revolution. Yasmine Ghaleb, a professor of art history, believes there’s something special about the portrait of a young Egyptian woman and is intrigued by its mysterious origins. As she works on the surface, which was damaged in a fire, she discovers human hair hidden under layers of paint. After comparing the painting to others online, she decides it must be the work of obscure French artist Alton Germain. She travels to Paris, where she consults with her mentor and tries to learn more about Germain. Adly intercuts Yasmine’s story with chapters set in 1798, featuring the painting’s subject, a teenager named Zeinab al-Bakri, beloved by both Germain and Napoleon. Adly blends vivid contemporary scenery—Cairo’s whirling dervishes, a Parisian bar hidden in a bookstore—with historical passages recounting Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt and Syria. Too often, the story plods along inelegantly, especially when the narrative shifts to Germaine’s notes, and the translation often feels overly explanatory (“Yasmine’s name, which means jasmine, was enough to bring its scent with her”). Still, Adly’s inspired story of art and resistance to colonization hits the mark.

October 30, 2020

Egyptian-born author Rasha Adly deftly weaves together the stories of two women in her sixth novel, The GirlWith Braided Hair. A mysterious, unsigned painting ties together art history professor Yasmine with Zeinab, the subject of the artwork. Adly cleverly reveals Zeinab's story in parallel to Yasmine's as Yasmine grows increasingly obsessed discovering the painting's origins. Zeinab is the daughter of a powerful sheikh in collusion with Napoleon during his historic invasion of Egypt and subsequent occupation of Cairo. Central to her father's duplicitous actions is his support for Napoleon's intensifying interest in Zeinab, even as she has fallen in with Alton Germain, the painting's creator. Zeinab's dangerous romantic involvement with Germain, and the European culture he represents, complement Yasmine's on again/off again romance with Sherif, an architect on his own path to a spiritual awakening after a series of mystical encounters with a dervish. VERDICT: Adly has created a wonderful homage to Cairo's past and present. Her vibrant descriptions of the city in the 21st century and during the Napoleonic era bring its rich urban street scenes to life. Adly's novel also gives voice to Egypt's successful resistance against French colonization. The Girl With Braided Hair had already been longlisted for the "Arabic Booker," the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2018. Recommended. --Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis

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