Anchor, 1994. — 161 pades. — ISBN: 0385423330. A stunning novel by the widest-read Arab writer currently published in the U.S. The age of Nasser has ushered in enormous social change, and most of the middle-aged and middle-class sons and daughters of the old bourgeoisie find themselves trying to recreate the cozy, enchanted world they so dearly miss. One night, however, art and...
American University in Cairo Press, 1985. — 149 p. Autumn quail is the story of one man and the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. Isa al-Dabbagh is a senior civil servant in the Egyptian government who loses his job, and his fiancee, when the Purge Committees of the Revolution bring his venal past to light. His personal relationships reflect the resulting internal conflict he...
Anchor, 2012. — 198 p. — ISBN13: 9780307948656. Nearly sixty of Egypt’s past leaders — from the time of the Pharoahs to the twentieth century — are summoned to judgment in the Court of Osiris in the Afterlife, in this extraordinary novel by Nobel Prize–winning author Naguib Mahfouz. Before the Throne calls forth a parade of those who have shaped the modern nation of Egypt —...
Doubleday, 1995. — 462 p. — ISBN: 0385420943. In one of the most important books of his long and illustrative career, Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz presents a deeply spiritual and prophetic work. Neither a parable nor an allegory, this rich, self-contained novel echoes the rivalries, battles, love affairs, and miracles of the ancient world, confirming the richness...
Three Continents Press, 1990. — 126 p. — ISBN: 0894105817. "I enjoy playing in the small square between the archway and the takiya [monastery] where the Sufis live. Like all the other children, I admire the mulberry trees in the takiya garden, the only bt of green in the whole neighborhood. Our tender hearts yearn for their dark berries. But it stands like a fortress, this...
American University in Cairo Press, 2013. — 119 p. — ISBN: 9781617973062. Jaafar Ibrahim Sayyed al-Rawi, the main character in this most recently translated Mahfouz novel, is guided by his motto, let life be filled with holy madness to the last breath. He narrates his life story to a friend during one long night in a cafe in old Cairo. Through a series of bad decisions, he has...
Anchor, 2011. — 117 p. — ISBN: 0307793850. In this gripping and suspenseful novella from the Egyptian Nobel Prize-winner, three young friends survive interrogation by the secret police, only to find their lives poisoned by suspicion, fear, and betrayal. At a Cairo café in the 1960s, a legendary former belly dancer lovingly presides over a boisterous family of regulars,...
Anchor, 2011. — 392 p. — ISBN: 9780307948700. Khan al-Khalili, by Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz, portrays the clash of old and new in an historic Cairo neighborhood as German bombs fall on the city. The time is 1942, World War II is at its height, and the Africa Campaign is raging along the northern coast of Egypt. Against this backdrop, Mahfouz’s novel tells the story...
American University in Cairo Press, 2011. — 138 p. — ISBN: 9774164520. A vibrant novel of memorable characters who search for happiness and true love, cope with the bitterness that results from love's betrayal, and embrace new beginnings. Set in Cairo in the aftermath of the Six-Day War of 1967, Love in the Rain introduces us to an assortment of characters who, each in his or...
Anchor, 1991. — 329 p. — ISBN: 0385264763. This much-loved Mahfouz masterpiece is a rich account of life in a back street in a poor quarter of medieval Cairo. While the novel focuses on a willful young woman whose ambition to escape the confines of the alley leads her into prostitution, a pageant of other vivid characters, from the cafe owner who likes boys to the man who...
Three Continents Press, 1990. — 173 p. — ISBN: 0894106937. Politically this novel deals with the historical past. Egypt has become less of a socialist country than what it appears to be. Influence and wealth reside over qualifications. One of Mahfouz's most lyrical novels, this story is an insider's look at old Alexandria, offering the classic plot of intertwined characters...
Doubleday, 1990. — 142 p. — ISBN: 0385264550. A complex tale of alienation and despair. Unable to achieve psychological renewal in the aftermath of Nasser's revolution, a man sacrifices his work and family to a series of illicit love affairs that intensify his feelings of estrangement. A passionate outcry against irrelevance.
Doubleday Books, 1990. — 509 p. — ISBN: 0385264666. This is a sweeping and evocative portrait of both a family and a country struggling to move toward independence in a society that has resisted change for centuries. Set against the backdrop of Britain's occupation of Egypt immediately after World War I, Palace Walk introduces us to the Al Jawad family. Ahmad, a middle-class...
Doubleday, 1991. — 431 p. — ISBN: 0385264674. Master storyteller Naguib Mahfouz follows the family of Al-Sayyid Ahmad into the awakening world of Cairo in the '20s in a sensual and provocative novel sure to enthrall the legions of readers who made Palace Walk a bestseller. Filled with drama, humor, and remarkable insights into the human condition, this is an unforgettable story.
Anchor, 1992. — 319 p. — ISBN: 0385264704. Sugar Street is the final novel in Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz’s magnificent Cairo Trilogy, an epic family saga of colonial Egypt that is considered his masterwork. The novels of the Cairo Trilogy trace three generations of the family of tyrannical patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict hand...
Doubleday, 1994. — 416 p. — ISBN: 0385423241. In this captivating novel, Mahfouz chronicles he dramatic history of the al-Nagi family - a family that moves, over many generations, from the heights of power and glory to the depths of decadence and decay. The Harafish begins with the tale of Ashur al-Nagi, a man who grows from humble origins to become a great leader, a legend...
Anchor, 2012. — 477 p. — ISBN: 9780307947673. A stunning example of Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz’s psychological portraiture, The Mirage is the story of an intense young man who has been so dominated by his mother that her death sets him dangerously adrift in a world he cannot manage alone. Kamil Ru’ba is a tortured soul who hopes that writing the story of...
Anchor, 2006. — 181 p. — ISBN: 0307277143. Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz draws on his homeland’s rich engagement with the afterlife–and his own near-death experience at the hands of a would-be assassin–in these newly translated, brilliantly mysterious stories of the supernatural. Among those who haunt these tales are the ghosts of Akhenaten, Woodrow Wilson, and Gamal...
DoubleDay, 1989. — 176 p. — ISBN: 0385264631. Set against the backdrop of the the theater, this novel is a taut psychological drama on and off the stage. First published in 1981, this brilliant novel focuses on how time transforms people and their emotions.
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