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Title: The Road to Ramadan by Mohamed Heikal, Murhammad Rhasanayn Haykal ISBN: 0-345-25351-5 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: October, 1976 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $1.95

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Average Customer Rating: 1 (1 review)

Rating: 1
Summary: Anti-Imperialist Egyptian Passion Play
Comment: Mohamed Heikal is one of the few Egyptian writers to have been widely published in the Western World and his "Road to Ramadan" is one of his earliest works detailing the Arab (Egyptian and Syrian) part in the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Egypt, Israel and Syria and in a larger context between the superpowers of the USA and USSR. I have long studied military history as well as the background of the Middle Eastern conflict and was interested in hearing the Egyptian side of the 1973 Yom Kippur War (which he also calls the Ramadan War and the October War). Unfortunately, Heikal tells very little about the war and instead focuses on his worship of Nasser, his own "wondrous" exploits and praise of the Socialist institutions of Egypt at that time. It's only in the last seventy pages of the 283-page book that he even begins to address the war and only then in terms of praise for the Egyptian army (which was summarily beaten on the 1973 Yom Kippur battlefield even though Heikal has difficulty saying that).
The book turns into a paean of praise to the wonders of Egypt's autocracy under Nasser, and later Sadat, presenting one-sided views of the Egyptian government's failings, many of which Heikal repudiates in his later books when it became politically expedient to do so. Among the more blatant of his gaffes is praise for Sadat, whom at one point he calls the "elected" leader of Egypt, which is a statement that has little to no truth in it. My copy of this book was written in 1976 before Muslim extremists assassinated Sadat and Heikal spends much of the book alternately praising Nasser and Sadat. In some of Heikal's later books written after Sadat's assassination, he readily demeans Sadat and calls him a fool. The book is really no more than the semi-official government opinion of the ruling Egyptian elite as expressed through the mouthpiece of Heikal. Having lived in the former Soviet Union, I can say that this book not only resembles shoddy Soviet propaganda but also is a poor copy of propaganda that already stunk in the first place.
Among the book's other failing are a very large number of typos and English usage errors (which I'm assuming Heikal himself wrote since he constantly praises his own command of the English language and no translator is credited). The reason I call the book an "Anti-Imperialist Egyptian Passion Play" is because of the presence of the large number of speeches that Heikal claims are paraphrased from Nasser's secret meetings with Soviet and other world leaders. In Heikal's writing, Nasser always utterly out-speaks everyone else in the world, "proving" how much better he is than everyone else. The speeches resemble nothing less than the passion plays of early Christianity. As an enthusiast of military history, I find that the book provides little in the way of maps, orbats or other useful information. This book is a political diatribe: no more, no less.

I cannot recommend this blatant and dated piece of propaganda, which is both poorly written and edited.

Review by: Maximillian Ben Hanan