"In the course of my long travels I have never seen a city so devastated. After a long time I ventured out into the streets. Death, cold and heavy, hung in the air. Walls have no value here, doors have been eliminated. No one is certain that they will see another day."

The Egypt of the Mamluk dynasty witnessed a period of artistic ostentation and social and political upheaval, at the heart of which lay the unsolved question of the ruler's legitimacy. Now, in 1516, the Mamluk reign is coming to an end with the advance of the invading. Ottomans. The numerous narrators,...

A unique and surprising photographic presentation that invites us to look and think again about what we are seeing

In this surrealist novel with political and religious aspects and an edge of satire, the narrator is an unseen, unheard presence with the privilege of observing events from the past, mostly those involving his father and grandfather. Inanimate objects that have "witnessed" events (such as a date palm, or a brick in a hospital wall) report to the narrator, who seems to know no temporal or physical boundaries.
A sense of displaced time saturates the blending of real and unreal events, such as the fight in the desert around Karbala against Israel and the forces of the West (including William...

For Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006), Cairo was always a place of special resonance. As the place in which he was born and lived his whole life, it is a city he loved passionately and visited and revisited in his writing. It is the setting for nearly all his novels and short stories, not merely as a backdrop but as an integral part of his fiction, playing its own role in the dramas.
In this special new and expanded edition of the bestselling book first published in 1999, photographer Britta Le Va guides us through his pages, and treads his streets and alleys, to produce a...