Naguib Mahfouz

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, including a group of idealistic university students. One day, amid reports of a wave of arrests, three of the students disappear: the excitable Hilmi, his friend Ismail, and Ismail's beautiful girlfriend Zaynab. When they return months later, they are apparently unharmed and yet subtly and profoundly changed. It is only years later, after their lives have been further shattered, that the narrator pieces together the young people's horrific stories and learns how the government used them against one another. In a riveting final chapter, their torturer himself enters the Café and sits among his former victims, claiming a right to join their society of the disillusioned. Now translated into English for the first time, Naguib Mahfouz's tale of the insidious effects of government-sanctioned torture and the suspension of rights and freedoms in a time of crisis is shockingly contemporary.

Widely acclaimed as Naguib Mahfouz's best novel, Midaq Alley brings to life one of the hustling, teeming back alleys of Cairo in the 1940s. From Zaita the cripple-maker to Kirsha the hedonistic cafe owner, from Abbas the barber who mistakes greed for love to Hamida who sells her soul to escape the alley, from waiters and widows to politicians, pimps, and poets, the inhabitants of Midaq Alley vividly evoke Egypt's largest city as it teeters on the brink of change. Never has Nobel Prize-winner Mahfouz's talent for rich and luxurious storytelling been more evident than here, in his portrait of one small street as a microcosm of the world on the threshold of modernity.

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 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 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.

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988,  Naguib Mahfouz is perhaps the best-known living  Arab writer. His books have had great success in  this country, particularly The Cairo  Trilogy. Fans of the famed trilogy will be  delighted with The Harafish, an epic  novel that chronicles the dramatic history of the  al-Nagi family -- a family that  moves, over many generations, from the height 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 beginnings to become a great leader,  a legend among his people. Generation after  generation, however, Ashur's descendants grow further  from his legendary example. They lose touch with  their origins as they amass and then squander large  fortunes, marry prostitutes when they marry at all,  and develop rivalries that end in death. The  community's upper class keeps a watchful eye on the  descendants of al-Nagi for fear  of losing their privileges, but they find no threat  of another such as Ashur. Not, that is, until the  al-Nagi who, like his noble  ancestor, finds his power once again from among  The Harafish, or the common people.  Through the strength of their numbers and their  passion, the glory of the name of  al-Nagi is restored. "Of all  [Mahfouz's] experiments in recent decades, this  is the one which owes least to western inspiration  and is probably the most successful. The  Harafish, fluently translated by  Catherine Cobham, makes accessible and engrossing reading."  -- The Washington Post Book  World.

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.

The novel is set in 1960s Alexandria at the pension Miramar. The novel follows the interactions of the residents of the pension, its Greek mistress Mariana, and her servant, Zohra. As each character in turn fights for Zohra's affections or allegiance tensions and jealousies arise. The story is retold four times from the perspective of a different resident each time, allowing the reader to understand the intricacies of post-revolutionary Egyptian life.

رواية تحكي عن رحالة عربي هاجر من بلاده بعد فشلة في الزواج من محبوبته إلى دار الجبل بحثا عن الكمال والعدالة المفقودين في بلاده. يشجعه على ذلك استاذه الذي فشل في اكمال الرحلة بسبب الحرب التي كانت تدور بين البلاد المتجاورة. و يمر في رحلته على عدة بلاد ويتعطل في رحلته أكثر من مرة بسبب زواجه وسجنه. يمر في رحلته على بلاد المشرق حيث يلتقي بعروسة ويتزوجها وينجب منها 5 اطفال. ولكنه يفرق بينه وبينهم بسبب محاولته تعليم اطفاله عقيدته. ثم بعد ذلك يرحل إلى البلد التالية وهي بلاد الحيرة. يرى فيها ان الملك يعتبر تمثيل لله وتدور حرب بين الحيرة والمشرق وتنتصر جيوش الحيرة وتصبح عروسة إحدى السبايا ويشتريها. ولكن الحكيم الأكبر للملك يريدها لنفسة فيتسبب في دخول ابن فطومة إلى السجن لمدة 20 عاما. يقوم انقلاب على الملك الحالي وياتي ملك جديد ويحرر ابن فطومة. يترك دار الحيرة راحلا إلى" بلاد الحلبة " حيث يجد ان الشعوب شديدة الحرية الدينية وان كل الديانات تتعايش في البلد بما فيها الالحاد. يتزوج للمرة الثانية من سامية وهي ممرضة وينجب منها. يرحل إلى دار الامان بحثا عن استكمال رحلته ويرى في دار الامان ان كل فرد مشجع على التجسس على صاحبه.و ان كل فرد لا يحق له ابداء ارائه في غير مجاله وعمله ثم يتركها راحالا إلى بلاد الغروب التي تعتبر المحطة النهائية قبل وصولة إلى دار الجبل ومنها يرحل إلى دار الجبل بسبب الحرب الدائرة وبعد سفر شهر متواصل يصل بوابات دار الجبل وعندها يصل إلى نهاية الرواية ويترك القارئ لاستنتاج النهاية.

Roman interzis in tarile arabe timp de 50 de ani • Laureat al Premiului Nobel pentru Literatura 1988 Romanul Baietii de pe strada noastra a fost interzis in mai toate tarile arabe, sub acuzatia de blasfemie. In spatele personajelor si al intimplarilor povestite se intrevede o parabola ce reuneste teme si motive atit din Coran, cit si din Vechiul si Noul Testament, precum si referiri la regimurile politice opresive ale Egiptului. Istorisirea incepe cu vietile patriarhului Al-Gabalawi si ale fiilor sai, Adham si Idris, alungati din gradina pa-rinteasca pentru pacatele lor. De-a lungul mai multor generatii si sub stapinirea a numerosi despoti, fiecare neam isi afirma dreptul la o viata prospera, iar o serie de „trimisi” autoproclamati ai Stapinului preiau conducerea pentru a obtine, prin forta sau puritate, viata tihnita la care visase stramosul Adham dupa alungarea din gradina. Ultimul „profet” al lui Al-Gabalawi, Arafa, pare detinatorul unei vraji nemaivazute, o arma cu ajutorul careia oamenii de rind isi pot detrona in sfirsit asupritorii.

From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and author of the Cairo trilogy, comes Akhenaten, a fascinating work of fiction about the most infamous pharaoh of ancient Egypt. In this beguiling new novel, originally published in 1985 and now appearing for the first time in the United States, Mahfouz tells with extraordinary insight the story of the "heretic pharaoh," or "sun king,"--and the first known monotheistic ruler--whose iconoclastic and controversial reign during the 18th Dynasty (1540-1307 B.C.) has uncanny resonance with modern sensibilities. Narrating the novel is a young man with a passion for the truth, who questions the pharaoh's contemporaries after his horrible death--including Akhenaten's closest friends, his most bitter enemies, and finally his enigmatic wife, Nefertiti--in an effort to discover what really happened in those strange, dark days at Akhenaten's court.  As our narrator and each of the subjects he interviews contribute their version of Akhenaten, "the truth" becomes increasingly evanescent. Akhenaten encompasses all of the contradictions his subjects see in him: at once cruel and empathic, feminine and barbaric, mad and divinely inspired, his character, as Mahfouz imagines him, is eerily modern, and fascinatingly ethereal.  An ambitious and exceptionally lucid and accessible book, Akhenaten is a work only Mahfouz could render so elegantly, so irresistibly.

First published in 1956, this is a powerful portrayal of a middle-class Egyptian family confronted by material, moral, and spiritual problems during World War II.

Ravi par les histoires que Schéhérazade lui a racontées pendant mille et une nuits, le sultan Schahriar décide de la garder comme épouse. Les habitants de la grande ville - Le Caire, sans doute - célèbrent dans la liesse l'heureux dénouement, sans savoir qu'ils vont désormais assister, dans leur vie quotidienne, à des événements aussi étranges et merveilleux que les contes de Schéhérazade... Il fallait toute la verve de Naguib Mahfouz pourprolonger ainsi les Mille et Une Nuits en une succession vertigineuse de faits divers où s'abolissent les frontières entre le rêve et la réalité, la folie et la sagesse, le bien et le mal.