Newly opened publishing house Malamih claims that its mission is to introduce unconventional books, and “Rogers by Ahmed Nagi is certainly that.
While Nagi’s strong prose and unusual style, full of wild leaps of imagination and mythical unexplained events sucks the reader into the novel, his lack of plot structure and character development fail to keep the reader tagging along behind him.
Nagi opens his book by informing the reader that it is best understood after listening to Pink Floyd’s album “The Wall. There is a link between the two. The book is named Rogers, presumably after Roger Waters, the band’s singer, bass player, and leader.
Both tell the story of a man who withdraws into fantasy constantly, and they even both have somewhat similar tales of students rebelling against teachers, past traumatic wars, and unfaithful partners.
However, the two part ways in one critical point. “The Wall tells the story of a man who gradually builds a wall between himself and the world and withdraws into fantasy. By the end of the album, his life and character are fully fleshed out. But Nagi decides not to develop his protagonist, plot, or other main characters. Without even a central storyline, Rogers devolves into a collection of seemingly random stories and fantasies. And, without plot or strongly-developed characters, the reader simply drifts away.
This is a shame because it is clear from the beginning that Nagi is both a creative and witty writer. Some, perhaps even most, of the stories and themes are quite interesting.
The student revolution, the descriptions of his street and neighborhood, his sickly grandfather and overly protective mother, his love for an unfaithful girlfriend; any one of these themes could have been developed and formed the core of a powerful book had Nagi chosen to do so.
When I started to read the book, I was entranced by the crackling prose and sense of willfulness on the author’s part. But without any sort of coherent narrative developing, I slowly began to lose interest.
Another frustrating aspect of the book comes from the fantasies themselves. They often take wild leaps into supernatural realms and simply feel cartoonish.
One, for example, talks about how the rebelling students create a secret weapon in their revolution, which seems to be a giant robot, called “MacFear. MacFear can shoot lasers from his eyes and gamma rays from his body and possesses other over-the-top powers as well.
Another tale begins with his grandfather and then ends up with a cosmic battle between a tyrannical dragon and a giant whale. The whale defeats the dragon by slapping it with its tail, which causes it to fall into the sea.
After finishing the book, and having received little in the way of resolution or explanation for the previous 154 pages, I spent some time trying to construct a coherent narrative of my own.
The best I could come up with is that perhaps the whole point of the book is that the main character escapes from the pain of cruel teachers, his sickly grandfather, the war, and his unfaithful girlfriend by retreating into ludicrous fantasy. But without a plot the reader has little reason to follow him there.
