The Mahfouz Dialogs records the memories, views, and jokes of Naguib Mahfouz on subjects ranging from politics to the relationship between his novels and his life, as delivered to intimate friends at a series of informal meetings stretching out over almost half a century. Mahfouz was a pivotal figure not only in world literature (through being awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1988 he became the first writer in Arabic to win a mass audience), but also in his own society, where he vastly enhanced the image of the writer in the eyes of the public and encapsulated—as the victim of a savage attack on his life by an Islamist in 1994—the struggle between pluralism, tolerance, and secularism on the one hand and extremist Islam. Moderated by Gamal al-Ghitani, a writer of a younger generation who shared a common background with Mahfouz (al-Ghitani also grew up in medieval Cairo) and felt a vast personal empathy for the writer despite their sometimes different views, these exchanges throw new light on Mahfouz’s life, the creation of his novels, and literary Egypt in the second half of the twentieth century.
The Mahfouz Dialogs
Gamal al-Ghitani
Translated by
Humphrey Davies
240 pp.
15X23cm
ISBN 9789774161278
For sale worldwide
16.95
Humphrey Davies
Related products
Dreams of Departure
The Last Dreams Published in the Nobel Laureate’s Lifetime
Naguib MahfouzTranslated byRaymond Stock
In this second collection of writing, based on his own dreams serialized in a Cairo magazine before his death in 2006, Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz again displays his matchless ability to tell epic stories in uncannily terse form. As in the first volume (The Dreams, AUC Press, 2004), we meet more of the real (and unreal) figures that filled the author’s life with glory and worry, ecstasy and ennui, in tales dreamed by a mind too fertile to ever truly rest. In them, a man sent by a victorious invader to open a storehouse holding the statue of Egypt’s reawakening finds his access denied by a menacing reptile. An obscure writer dies, and a despairing inscription on his coffin turns his funeral into a massive demonstration. A man opens a stubborn gate to stare at a lake over which loom the illuminated faces of those he has loved, but who are no more—in search of the soul who made him long to live forever. The ever more condensed and poetic episodes in Dreams of Departure movingly carry on Mahfouz’s only major work after a knife attack in 1994 ironically inspired him to dream in print for his readers.
...read more
Hardbound
140 pp.13.5X21cm
10.99
Palace Walk
Naguib MahfouzTranslated byWilliam M. Hutchins
Olive E. Kenny
Palace Walk transports us into the life of a Cairo family during Egypt’s occupation by British forces in the 1900s. The father, Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, is somber and tyrannical with his wife and children, but at night seeks pleasure in the aesthetic and erotic. His wife, Amina, is a willing prisoner in a society where it is forbidden for a virtuous woman to leave her house except in the company of her husband or adult sons. Aisha, their younger daughter, dares to peer through the mashrabeya from which the women view the world. And Fahmy, their second son, is caught up in the violence that threatens them all as Egypt struggles to become free.
...read more
Paperback
514 pp.15X23cm
12.99
Arabian Nights and Days
Naguib MahfouzTranslated by Denys Johnson-Davies
Drawing on the characters and the spirit of the classic A Thousand and One Nights, Arabian Nights and Days is a significant departure for Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. Though he is best known for chronicling his own times, in this novel, first published in Arabic in 1982, Mahfouz injects new life into an Arabic masterpiece. Though it is set in an Islamic city in medieval times, the modern reader will find much in this novel that is surprisingly familiar. It depicts a city plagued by widespread corruption among its most powerful citizens, and a pervasive sense of social unrest and insecurity. The chief of police is kept particularly busy dealing with the underground activities of various religious sects that are intent on changing the unscrupulous regime. Amid all of this, as in the Thousand and One Nights, genies appear out of bottles accidentally opened by innocent individuals, affecting their lives in exciting, sometimes detrimental ways. Famed for his skill as a storyteller, Naguib Mahfouz has here produced a novel that is as colorful and entertaining as the book that inspired it.
...read more
Paperback
240 pp.13X20.5cm
9.99
Naguib Mahfouz at Sidi Gaber
Reflections of a Nobel Laureate, 1994–2001
From conversations with Mohamed SalmawyIn one of his regular columns in Al-Ahram Weekly, Naguib Mahfouz at the age of 89 wrote of his feeling of having reached the penultimate station of his life, and noted how it reminded him of his annual journey from Cairo to Alexandria: at Sidi Gaber Station he begins to prepare his luggage, ready to get off the train, because the next station is the final one. This celebratory volume, published on the occasion of the Nobel laureate’s 90th birthday, brings together a selection of the more personal, reflective pieces that have appeared over the past seven years. They reveal a writer concerned as always with the human condition, with his own thought processes, and with the craft of writing, offering rare insights into the way a great writer thinks and works. The range and quality of writing is even more remarkable when one remembers that since a nearly fatal knife attack in 1994, the injuries Mahfouz sustained, combined with his failing eyesight, have made it almost impossible for him to write. But as a man who has devoted his life to the written word, Mahfouz now prepares his weekly articles through conversations with his friend Mohamed Salmawy, who has selected and gathered the pieces in this collection. Mahfouz fans and anyone interested in learning more about the life, times, and thoughts of one of the major figures of modern Arabic literature will find this volume an essential addition to their bookshelf.
...read more
Hardbound
160 pp.13.5X21cm
16.99