Hacker Cinema
The Egyptian
1954 · Film · 139 min
Directed by Michael Curtiz
In eighteenth-dynasty Egypt, Sinuhe, a poor orphan, becomes a brilliant physician and with his friend Horemheb is appointed to the service of the new Pharoah. Sinuhe's personal triumphs and tragedies are played against the larger canvas of the turbulent events of the 18th dynasty. As Sinuhe is drawn into court intrigues he learns the answers to the questions he has sought since his birth.
2 positivefrom 2 commenters
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2 comments on Hacker News
You'd be surprised, honestly. What matters is also comprehensible input size, so long works like LOTR (which has an excellent Finnish translation by Kersti Juva for anyone looking to find works to read) are a good choice. Similarly, there's a lot of Finnish literature in Finnish which Finnish people spend time reading, some of which is translated to many, many languages. The Egyptian by Mika Waltari is one of those classics. Not nearly everyone here knows English well. TV shows and movies are usually subtitled as well, save for kids' shows. Finland does however have three mandatory languages in the basic schooling, which are your native language, the other native language, and then English. A fourth one is not uncommon either, so we have a lot of German, Spanish, Russian, Japanese etc. speakers here. Hell, jag kan neljää языки.
“The Egyptian” by Mika Waltari is a bit rare in English but it’s really a stupefyingly good historical novel. There is also a Hollywood film from 1954 but can’t really recommend it. The book is timeless, and describes all sorts things a person can face in a complex society (while retaining a historical context). It’s a bit like Catch-22 but without the humour, but the dark tone results in a cathartic reading experience.
The protagonist is effectively an expert professional and a fallible human rather than a Mary-sue swashbuckler - and as such is very relatable.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Egyptian