Najīb Maḥfūẓ

"Naguib Mahfouz's trilogy of colonial Egypt is the 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...

Seventeen tales based on the classic, The Thousand and One Nights, but full of modern messages.

"The tumultuous alley of this rich classic is inhabited by a delightful Egyptian family, but is also the setting for a second, hidden, and more daring story: the spiritual history of mankind. The men and women of a modern Cairo neighborhood unwittingly reenact the lives of their holy ancestors: from the feudal lord who disowns one son for diabolical pride and puts another to the est, to the savior of a succeeding generation who frees his people from...

With this portrait of a misanthropic civil servant, the Egyptian Nobel laureate devises a cunning send-up of egregious ambition, stodgy bureaucracy and cloying piety. Mahfouz's overblown language mirrors the grandiose aspirations of his protagonist Othman Bayyumi, a common archives clerk who schemes for a lofty appointment as Director General, expounding that "a government position is a brick in the edifice of the state, and the state is an exhalation...

Al-Tariq (The Way, 1964, appeared in English as The Search) is the story of a young man named Sabir (meaning "the patient one," an obviously ironic name), who, following the death of his mother, sets out on a desperate search for his father, from whom his mother had separated before he was born. Sabir becomes involved with a married woman, murders her rich, elderly husband, is caught and, at the end of the story, is awaiting execution.