The Cairo Trilogy Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street; Introduction by Sabry Hafez

by Mahfouz, Naguib; Maynard, William H.; Hafez, Sabry

• ISBN13: 9780375413315
• ISBN10: 0375413316
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-10-16
• Publisher: Everyman's Library

Summary

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Naguib Mahfouz's magnificent epic trilogy of colonial Egypt appears here in one volume for the first time. The Nobel Prizewinning 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 ofThe Cairo Trilogytrace 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 Walkintroduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sonsthe 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 inPalace of Desire, as the world around them opens to the currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoil brought by the 1920s.Sugar Streetbrings 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 Trilogyis the achievement of a master storyteller.

Author Biography

Naguib Mahfouz was born in Cairo in 1911 and began writing when he was seventeen. A student of philosophy and an avid reader, he has been influenced by many Western writers, including Flaubert, Balzac, Zola, Camus, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and, above all, Proust. He has more than thirty novels to his credit, ranging from his earliest historical romances to his most recent experimental novels. In 1988, Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lives in the Cairo suburb of Agouza.