About the Author

Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) is regarded by many as the greatest Arabic writer of the twentieth century. Born in the old Islamic Quarter of Cairo in 1911, he began writing when he was seventeen before entering university to study as a student of philosophy in 1930. He is the author of over thirty novels - including a number of masterpieces, such as The Cairo Trilogy and Children of the Alley - as well as numerous screenplays and essays. In 1988 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.Rasheed El-Enany is Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, as well as Professor Emeritus of Modern Arabic Literature, University of Exeter. He has authored several books on Naguib Mahfouz, including Naguib Mahfouz: His Life and Times. He is also the translator of the Mahfouz novel Respected Sir.Aran Byrne is an Arabic language graduate of SOAS (University of London) and Oxford University. He was co-translator of Democracy Is the Answer by the best-selling Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany.

Reviews

"[F]ollows Mahfouz's introspective literary aesthetic that considers itself uniquely Egyptian, and yet, can only work within the shared universal language of the novel--one of humanity's great inventions after fire, the wheel, and alphanumeric writing on papyrus scrolls. This book keeps reminding its reader of the absence of this novelistic vision as it offers a compilation of brief articles Mahfouz wrote for the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram. . . .Mahfouz's journalism triggers the need for a return to his fiction. Especially in these strange times, when the possibilities of addressing such unapologetically secularist concerns in writing are fast diminishing."--The Telegraph (India)