Book Description

Joseph is brought into Egypt by the traders, and he is sold to Potiphar, and in this new environment, he establishes himself as a trusted, and, later, a high-ranking member of Potiphar's extensive household. The story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife is too well-known to be retold here, but Mann fills his account with the most precise and intricate psychological details: the tension comes not from "what happens next?"--Since we all know what happens next -- but in the painstaking depiction of the development of various characters' psychologies. Rarely, if ever, has sexual desire been presented in more convincing detail than in the depiction of the wife of Potiphar, proud and aloof, lusting after the mere slave Joseph. And in this volume, another theme begins, I think, to develop: it is that word that Potiphar's wife could barely bring herself to say, even after hundreds of pages of agonising over it -- "love". Not necessarily love in a sexual sense, of course -- although that's part of it -- but the love that humanity, despite everything, persists in feeling for one another. The chapter depicting the death of the overseer, Mont-kaw, who had become as another father to Joseph, is among the most moving things I have read in any novel. For all the various complexities and layers of irony, Mann could at times be almost disconcertingly direct. - Himadri Chatterjee.