Word: lalla
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...face her audience. Younger men in the audience eyed appreciatively the girl's dark eyes, her rich red-brown hair and café au lait complexion. But many orthodox Moslem traditionalists just stared wide-eyed, stunned and aghast at the appearance in public of Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Aisha, eldest daughter of His Majesty the Sultan-17 years old, unveiled and unashamed...
...Sultan maintains a yoman "Black Guard" and their 300 horses, keeps 35 cars ranging from a Rolls Royce to a jeep, and big villas and staffs for his two sons and the three elder daughters. Apple of her father's eye is three-year-old Lalla Amina, daughter of the Sultan's second wife, who can break up any council of state by dashing in and flinging herself into her father's arms...
...like a civilized man on the brink of going native. Instead of preparing Lalla for the reality of his life, he is becoming enamored of the unreality of hers. He can congratulate himself that "she had picked him blindfold, out of a hundred: rejected husband, melancholy salesman of flour and pigmeal, he was changed into a prince every Saturday afternoon...
...cannot last. Kati dies; Franciska goes away. Aladar throws the whole weight of his personality on Lalla, heaps her with presents and promises. In the end she blurts out a tortured "Leave me alone," and escapes to Germany and the real world. Aladar grimly sees that he had "adored her, bossed her and sentimentalized her, until she could bear it no longer...
...kind of international society. It was that world of their own that I wanted to write about." The result is no Magic Mountain, but it is brilliant in its way. There has seldom been so sensual a novel written with so little eroticism or with so much effect. Lalla emerges as that strange girl who lies buried somewhere in most men's lives, the girl who was never attainable although all circumstances seemed just right for attainment. The supple dialogue is loaded with surprise and revelation; everything that is said has shape and texture and reverberates with hidden meaning...