Cheops: A Cupboard in the Sun
Paul West’s Cheops is an amazing piece of fantastical, say, satire? It is not a novel to be lightly read. With the historical setting of ancient Egypt approximately 4500+ years ago, it is a look at the dying days of the Pharaoh Cheops, best known for his pyramid. Wickedly wry, Cheops’ preparation for eternal afterlife is observed, and possibly plagued, by the presence of a punned Herodotus (famous Greek historian and notorious criticizer of Cheops’ building centuries later) who was transported back in time by the Egyptian God of the Dead, Osiris. Amidst palace intrigue, murder, thievery and some pyramid construction, multiple narrators tell Cheops’ last days with biting irony. Cheops, daughter Heduanna, Erodo, and God Osiris are among the many who put their two cents in. Despite the confusion sometimes of multiple perspectives, out-of-time characters and present-day references, Paul West’s distinctive writing is certainly refreshing and gives new outlook on events and people of so long ago. If taken for the ironically humorous, almost hallucinogenic journey it is, Cheops is truly an amusing novel of farcical thought.
