Khaled, the spoiled idle son of a pasha, meets Malim, carpenter's apprentice and son of a scoundrel, when he comes to fix a broken window. In the course of his work, Malim stumbles across a stash of money and dutifully hands it in. Khaled cooks up an overly elaborate plot to see that his dastardly father pays Malim his due, but the plot backfires and Malim is thrown in jail. Khaled's guilt over Malim's misfortune, made worse by his ridiculous attempts to defend him, result in a decisive moment: he breaks ties with his cruel and tyrannical father, seeking to leave behind the upper-class lifestyle he finds so suffocating. They meet again years later, when Malim has been released from prison and given up on earning an honest living. Khaled gets caught up in Malim's latest scam and is drawn into joining his commune of eccentrics and failed artists living in a derelict Mamluk citadel.

For Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, Cairo has always been a place of special resonance. As the place in which he was born and has lived his whole life, it is a city he loves passionately and has visited and revisited in his writing. It is the setting for nearly all his novels and short stories, not merely as a backdrop but as an integral part of his fiction, playing its own role in the dramas. The old streets of the Cairo Trilogy and the microcosmic cul-de-sac of Midaq Alley become fictional characters as fascinating as the human ones for Naguib Mahfouz. A longtime admirer of the novels of Naguib Mahfouz, photographer Britta Le Va discovered old Cairo through his works. Here, she guides us through his pages, and treads his streets and alleys, to produce a collection of outstanding visual images of the historic city. Each complements a verbal image selected from Mahfouz's writings. In his introduction, novelist Gamal al-Ghitani describes a walking tour with the great man around the streets of Gamaliya, that historic heart of the old city where both of them--more than thirty years apart--were born and grew up. Along the way, Mahfouz reminisces and remarks on what had changed and what had not in eight decades.

Naguib Mahfouz's magnificent epic trilogy of colonial Egypt appears here in one volume for the first time. The Nobel Prize—winning writer's masterwork is the engrossing story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Britain's occupation of Egypt in the early decades of the twentieth century.

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 while living a secret life of self-indulgence. Palace Walk introduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons–the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. Al-Sayyid Ahmad's rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination in Palace of Desire, as the world around them opens to the currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoil brought by the 1920s. Sugar Street brings Mahfouz's vivid tapestry of an evolving Egypt to a dramatic climax as the aging patriarch sees one grandson become a Communist, one a Muslim fundamentalist, and one the lover of a powerful politician.

Throughout the trilogy, the family's trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years spanning the two World Wars, as change comes to a society that has resisted it for centuries. Filled with compelling drama, earthy humor, and remarkable insight, The Cairo Trilogy is the achievement of a master storyteller.

This volume consists of essays published in newspapers between 1982 and 1988, coinciding with the early years of Hosni Mubarak's presidency. Mahfouz describes Mubarak's early administration as an 'unhurried democracy'. In these essays, Mubarak is not subjected to direct criticism, which is mainly reserved for Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat. Meanwhile, political figures such as Saad Zaghloul and Mustafa al-Nahhas are praised as great leaders, signifying Mahfouz's continuous sympathy with the Wafd party. Mahfouz's exceptional humanity is most prominent in the careful attention he pays to the daily challenges faced by Egyptians. The writing presented here reveals his remarkable insight into the country's political and social issues, as well as a pragmatic capacity to see the larger picture, particularly when it comes to the role of Egypt in the Arab world. A recurring theme in the majority of the essays is Mahfouz's perseverance in insisting, despite hardships, on tolerance and justice, on peaceful coexistence, on the maintenance of work ethics, on the importance of cultural education, and the merits of democracy.

When Naguib Mahfouz quit his job as a civil servant in 1971, a Nobel Prize in literature was still off on the horizon, as was his global recognition as the central figure of Arab literature. He was just beginning his post on the editorial staff of the Egyptian newspaper "Al-Ahram," and elsewhere in Cairo, Anwar Sadat was just beginning his hugely transformative Egyptian presidency, which would span eleven years and come to be known as the Sadat era. This book offers English-language readers the first glimpse of the Sadat era through Mahfouz s eyes, a collection of pieces that captures one of Egypt s most important decades in the prose of one of the Middle East s most important writers. This volume stitches together a fascinating and vivid account of the dramatic events Sadat s era, from his break with the Soviet Union to the Yom Kippur War with Israel and eventual peace accord and up to his assassination by Islamic extremists in 1981. Through this tumultuous history, Mahfouz takes on a diverse array of political topics including socioeconomic stratification, democracy and dictatorship, and Islam and extremism which are still of crucial relevance to Egypt today.Clear-eyed and direct, the works illuminate Mahfouz s personal and political convictions that were more often hidden in his novels, enriching his better-known corpus with social, political, and ideological context. These writings are a rare treasure, a story of a time of tremendous social and political change in the Middle East told by one if its most iconic authors."

THE ACCLAIMED INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER BY THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR. 'A masterpiece' - The Times 'The Arab Tolstoy' - Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Shamelessly entertaining' - Guardian 'Luminous' - New York Times 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 shopkeeper runs his household strictly according to the Qur'an while at night he explores the pleasures of Cairo. A tyrant at home, Ahmad forces his gentle, oppressed wife and two daughters to live cloistered lives behind the house's latticed windows, while his three very different sons live in fear of his harsh will. The first book of the classic Cairo Trilogy, the greatest and best loved work by the 20th century's most important Arab novelist.

THE ACCLAIMED INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER FROM THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR. 'A masterpiece' - The Times 'Shamelessly entertaining' - Guardian The sensual and provocative second book in the classic Cairo Trilogy, Palace Of Desire follows the Al Jawad family into the awakening world of the 1920's and the sometimes violent clash between Islamic ideals, personal dreams and modern realities. Having given up his vices after his son's death, ageing patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad pursues a bewitching lute-player - only for her to marry his eldest son. His rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination as they test the loosening reins of societal and parental control. And Ahmad's youngest son, in an unforgettable portrayal of unrequited love, falls for the sophisticated daughter of a rich Europeanised family. A vivid portrait of a family and a country in a time of upheaval, the Cairo Trilogy is the greatest and best loved work by the 20th century's most important Arab novelist.

THE ACCLAIMED INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER BY THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR. 'A masterpiece' - The Times 'The Arab Tolstoy' - Simon Sebag Montefiore Sugar Street, the climactic final book in the classic Cairo Trilogy, is the captivating story of a family struggling to change with the rise of modern Egypt. As Cairo shrugs off the final vestiges of colonialism, Ahmad Al Jawad has lost his power and surveys the world from a latticed balcony. Unable to control his family's destiny, he watches helplessly as his dynasty and the traditions he holds dear disintegrate before his eyes. But through Ahamd's three grandsons we see modern how Egypt takes shape. One grandson is a communist activist, another a Muslim fundamentalist, both working for what they believe will be a better world. And Ridwan, the inheritor of his father's charms, launches a political career aided by a homosexual affair with prominent politician. A vivid portrait of a family and a country in a time of upheaval, the Cairo Trilogy is the greatest and best loved work by the 20th century's most important Arab novelist.

Naguib Mahfouz, the Arab world's only Nobel literature laureate, is best known internationally for his short stories and novels, including The Cairo Trilogy. But in Egypt he was equally familiar to newspaper readers for the column he wrote for many years in the leading daily Al-Ahram, in which he reflected on issues of the day from domestic and international events, politics, and economics to historic anniversaries, inspirational personalities, and questions of cultural freedom. This volume brings together the 285 articles he wrote between January 1989 and the near-fatal knife attack in October 1994. In carefully crafted short texts, his social conscience is revealed as he highlights political shortcomings, economic injustice, and corruption in Egypt and the wider Arab world. His philosophical sensitivity comes to the fore as he contemplates the meaning of a historic events, contributions of an influential people, and what is required to lead a good life. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the Oslo peace accords, the spread of terrorism, the Cairo earthquake, the passing of Louis Awad, Yusuf Idris, Yahya Hakki, the third term of Hosni Mubarak, climate change, and more come under Naguib Mahfouz's fine scrutiny. For any fan of Mahfouz's fiction, this collection opens a window on a different side of his intellect, and it offers insights from one of the region's greatest modern minds.

To celebrate the centenary of the birth of the great Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, the AUC Press, which has been publishing English translations of Mahfouz's work since 1978, presents all his novels, three collections of short stories, and his autobiographical writings in a single library of 20 hardbound volumes, including all 42 works translated into English. From Khufu's Wisdom, first published in Arabic in 1939, to his last work of extended fiction, The Coffeehouse (1988), all thirty-five of his novels are here, along with thirty-eight short stories His Echoes of an Autobiography is included, as well as his exquisite late series of intensely short fictions known as The Dreams and the collection of his weekly newspaper columns, Naguib Mahfouz at Sidi Gaber. This unique library brings together all Naguib Mahfouz's translated work for the first time in a very special publishing event. - Volume 1: Khufu's Wisdom, Rhadopis of Nubia, Thebes at War - Volume 2: Cairo Modern, Khan al-Khalili - Volume 3: Midaq Alley - Volume 4: The Mirage - Volume 5: The Beginning and the End - Volume 6: Palace Walk - Volume 7: Palace of Desire - Volume 8: Sugar Street - Volume 9: Children of the Alley - Volume 10: The Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail, The Search - Volume 11: The Beggar, Adrift on the Nile, Miramar - Volume 12: Mirrors, Love in the Rain, Karnak Caf - Volume 13: Fountain and Tomb, Heart of the Night, Respected Sir - Volume 14: The Harafish - Volume 15: In the Time of Love, Wedding Song, Arabian Nights and Days - Volume 16: The Final Hour, Before the Throne - Volume 17: The Journey of Ibn Fattouma, Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth - Volume 18: The Day the Leader Was Killed, Morning and Evening Talk, The Coffeehouse - Volume 19: Echoes of an Autobiography, The Dreams, Dreams of Departure, Naguib Mahfouz at Sidi Gaber - Volume 20: The Time and the Place, The Seventh Heaven, Voices from the Other World.

Naguib Mahfouz is one of the most important writers in contemporary Arabic literature. Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1988 (the only Arab writer to win the prize thus far), his novels helped bring Arabic literature onto the international stage. Far fewer people know his nonfiction works, however-a gap that this book fills. Bringing together Mahfouz's early nonfiction writings (most penned during the 1930s) which have not previously been available in English, this volume offers a rare glimpse into the early development of the renowned author. As these pieces show, Mahfouz was deeply interested in literature and philosophy, and his early writings engage with the origins of philosophy, its development and place in the history of thought, as well its meaning writ large. In his literary essays, he discusses a wide range of authors, from Anton Chekov to his own Arab contemporaries like Taha Hussein.He also ventures into a host of important contemporary issues, including science and modernity, the growing movement for women's rights in the Arab world, and emerging ideologies like socialism-all of which outline the growing challenges to traditional modes of living that we saw all around him.Together, these essays offer a fascinating window not just into the mind of Mahfouz himself but the changing landscape of Egypt during that time, from the development of Islam to the struggles between tradition, modernity, and the influences of the West.

Meet the people of Cairo's Gamaliya quarter. There is Nabqa, son of Adam the waterseller who can only speak truths; the beautiful and talented Tawhida who does not age with time; Ali Zaidan, the gambler, late to love; and Boss Saqr who stashes his money above the bath. A neighbourhood of demons, dancing and sweet halva, the quarter keeps quiet vigil over the secrets of all who live there. This collection by pre-eminent Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz was recently discovered among his old papers. Found with a slip of paper titled `for publishing 1994', they are published here for the first time. Resplendent with Mahfouz's delicate and poignant observations of everyday happenings, these lively stories take the reader deep into the beating heart of Cairo.

Palace Walk is the first 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 while living a secret life of self-indulgence. Palace Walk introduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons—the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. The family’s trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years spanning the two world wars, as change comes to a society that has resisted it for centuries.

Translated by William Maynard Hutchins and Olive E. Kenny.

Considered by many to be Mahfouz's best novel,  Midaq Alley centers around the  residents of one of the hustling, teeming back alleys  of Cairo. No other novel so vividly evokes the  sights and sounds of the city. The universality and  timelessness of this book cannot be denied.

Naguib Mahfouz's magnificent epic trilogy of colonial Egypt appears here in one volume for the first time. The Nobel Prize--winning writer's masterwork is the engrossing story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Britain's occupation of Egypt in the early decades of the twentieth century.

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 while living a secret life of self-indulgence. "Palace Walk" introduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons-the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. Al-Sayyid Ahmad's rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination in "Palace of Desire," as the world around them opens to the currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoil brought by the 1920s. "Sugar Street" brings Mahfouz's vivid tapestry of an evolving Egypt to a dramatic climax as the aging patriarch sees one grandson become a Communist, one a Muslim fundamentalist, and one the lover of a powerful politician.

Throughout the trilogy, the family's trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years spanning the two World Wars, as change comes to a society that has resisted it for centuries. Filled with compelling drama, earthy humor, and remarkable insight, "The Cairo Trilogy" is the achievement of a master storyteller.

AN ANCHOR PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

From the Nobel Prize laureate and author of the acclaimed Cairo Trilogy, a beguiling and artfully compact novel set in Sadat's Egypt.

"[Mahfouz] is not only a Hugo and a Dickens, but also a Galsworthy, Zola and a Jules Romain."--Edward Said

The time is 1981, Anwar al-Sadat is president, and Egypt is lurching into the modern world. Set against this backdrop, The Day the Leader Was Killed relates the tale of a middle-class Cairene family. Rich with irony and infused with political undertones, the story is narrated alternately by the pious and mischievous family patriarch Muhtashimi Zayed, his hapless grandson Elwan, and Elwan's headstrong and beautiful fiancee Randa.  The novel reaches its climax with the assassination of Sadat on October 6, 1981, an event around which the fictional plot is skillfully woven.

The Day the Leader Was Killed brings us the essence of Mahfouz's genius and is further proof that he has, in the words of the Nobel citation, "formed an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind."

Anchor proudly presents a new omnibus volume of three novels--previously published separately by Anchor--by Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Assembled here is a collection of Mahfouz's artful meditations on the vicissitudes of post-Revolution Egypt. Diverse in style and narrative technique, together they render a rich, nuanced, and universally resonant vision of modern life in the Middle East.

The Beggar is a complex tale of alienation and despair. In the aftermath of Nasser's revolution, a man sacrifices his work and family to a series of illicit love affairs. Released from jail in post-Revolutionary times, the hero ofThe Thief and the Dogs blames an unjust society for his ill fortune, eventually bringing himself to destruction. Autumn Quail is a tale of moral responsibility, isolation, and political downfall about a corrupt bureaucrat who is one of the early victims of the purge after the 1952 revolution in Egypt.

Naguib Mahfouz's haunting novella of post-revolutionary Egypt combines a vivid pychological portrait of an anguished man with the suspense and rapid pace of a detective story.
After four years in prison, the skilled young thief Said Mahran emerges bent on revenge. He finds a world that has changed in more ways than one. Egypt has undergone a revolution and, on a more personal level, his beloved wife and his trusted henchman, who conspired to betray him to the police, are now married to each other and are keeping his six-year-old daughter from him. But in the most bitter betrayal, his mentor, Rauf Ilwan, once a firebrand revolutionary who convinced Said that stealing from the rich in a unjust society is an act of justice, is now himself a rich man, a respected newspaper editor who wants nothing to do with the disgraced Said. As Said's wild attempts to achieve his idea of justice badly misfire, he becomes a hunted man so driven by hatred that he can only recognize too late his last chance at redemption.

The completion of Khan al-Khalili in 1945 marked a turning point in Naguib Mahfouz's career. Departing from the traditional themes drawn from Egyptian antiquity that characterize the author's earlier works, Khan al-Khalili reflects instead a deep concern with the lives and problems of contemporary Egyptians.The time is 1942, the Second World War is at its height, and the Africa Campaign is raging along the northern coast of Egypt as far as El Alamein. Against this backdrop of international upheaval, the novel tells the story of the Akifs, a middle-class family that has taken refuge in Cairo's historic and bustling Khan al-Khalili neighborhood. Believing that the German forces will never bomb such a famously religious part of the city, they seek safety among the crowded alleyways, busy cafes, and ancient mosques of the Khan, adjacent to the area where Mahfouz himself spent much of his young life. Through the eyes of Ahmad, the eldest Akif son and the novel's central character, Mahfouz presents a richly textured vision of the Khan, drawing on his own memories to assemble a lively cast of characters whose world is framed by the sights, smells, and flavors of his childhood home. As Ahmad, a minor civil servant who has sacrificed both education and personal ambition in order to support his family, interacts with the people and traditions of Khan al-Khalili, a debate emerges that pits old against new, history against modernity, and faith against secularism. Addressing one of the fundamental questions of the modern era, Mahfouz asks whether, like the German bombs that threaten Khan al-Khalili daily, progress must necessarily be accompanied by the destruction of the past.Fans of Midaq Alley, The Beginning and the End, and The Cairo Trilogy will not want to miss this engaging and sensitive portrayal of a family at the crossroads of the old world and the new.

Known and loved throughout Egypt as a work that celebrates the national character, Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz's Thebes at War tells of a high point in Egyptian history-ancient Egypt's defeat of Asiatic foreigners who had dominated northern Egypt for two hundred years.
With a visit from a court official and a provocative insult, the southern pharaoh's long simmering resentment boils over, leading him to commit himself and his heirs to an epic struggle for the throne. Filled with the grand clash of armies, staggering defeats, daring escapes, and glorious victories, and written at a time when Egypt was again under the sway of foreign powers, Thebes at War is a resounding call to remember Egypt's long and noble history.