Selected and translated by the distinguished scholar Denys Johnson-Daivies, these stories have all the celebrated and distinctive characters and qualities found in Mahfouz's novels: The denizens of the dark, narrow alleyways of Cairo, who struggle to survive the poverty; melancholy ruminations on death; experiments with the supernatural; and witty excursions into Cairene middle-class life."
Selected and translated by the distinguished scholar Denys Johnson-Daivies, these stories have all the celebrated and distinctive characters and quali...
The Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz refashions the classic tales of Scheherazade into a novel written inhis own imaginative, spellbinding style. Here are genies and flying carpets, Aladdin and Sinbad, Ali Baba, and many other familiar stories from the tradition of The One Thousand and One Nights, made new by the magical pen of the acknowledged dean of Arabic letters, who plumbs their depths for timeless truths."
The Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz refashions the classic tales of Scheherazade into a novel written inhis own imaginative, spellb...
From the Foreword by Nadine Gordimer: "These pieces are meditations which echo that which was, has been, and is the writer Mahfouz. They are--in the words of the title of one of the prose pieces--'The Dialogue of the Late Afternoon' of his life. I don't believe any autobiography, with its inevitable implication of self-presentation, could have matched what we have here." With more than 500,000 copies of his books in print, Naguib Mahfouz has established a following of readers for whom Echoes of an Autobiography provides a unique opportunity to catch an intimate glimpse into the...
From the Foreword by Nadine Gordimer: "These pieces are meditations which echo that which was, has been, and is the writer Mahfouz. They are--in the w...
An alleyway of Tangier as seen through the eyes of a prostitute, the price paid by a sophisticated Cairene philanderer for his infatuation with a young bedouin girl, the callous treatment a young wife receives from the man to whom she has been married. These are some of the themes of the twenty-four stories in this volume, each by a different author and rendered into English by one of the finest translators of Arabic fiction. Among the authors represented are Edward El-Kharrat, Bahaa Taher, Alifa Rifaat, and Ghassan Kanafani. Through the eyes of insiders, these stories show us the intimate...
An alleyway of Tangier as seen through the eyes of a prostitute, the price paid by a sophisticated Cairene philanderer for his infatuation with a youn...
This dazzling anthology features the work of seventy-nine outstanding writers from all over the Arab-speaking world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, Syria in the north to Sudan in the south.
Edited by Denys Johnson-Davies, called by Edward Said "the leading Arabic-to-English translator of our time," this treasury of Arab voices is diverse in styles and concerns, but united by a common language. It spans the full history of modern Arabic literature, from its roots in western cultural influence at the end of the nineteenth century to the present-day flowering of...
This dazzling anthology features the work of seventy-nine outstanding writers from all over the Arab-speaking world, from Morocco in the west to Ir...
Together with such figures as the scholar Taha Hussein, the playwright Tawfik al-Hakim, the short story writer Mahmoud Teymour and - of course - Naguib Mahfouz, Yahya Hakki belongs to that distinguished band of early writers who, midway through the last century, under the influence of Western literature, began to practice genres of creative writing that were new to the traditions of classical Arabic. In the first story in this volume, the very short 'Story in the Form of a Petition, ' Yahya Hakki demonstrates his ease with gentle humor, a form rare in Arabic writing. In the...
Together with such figures as the scholar Taha Hussein, the playwright Tawfik al-Hakim, the short story writer Mahmoud Teymour and - of course - Nagui...
Here, for the first time, is a volume of short stories from this commercially and culturally vital and vibrant center of the Arab world. Life before oil in this region was harsh, and many of the stories in this collection by both men and women from all corners of the country tell of those times and the almost unbelievable changes that have come about in the space of two generations. Some tell of the struggles faced in the early days, while others bring the immediate past and the present together, revealing that the past, with all its difficulties and dangers, nonetheless possesses a certain...
Here, for the first time, is a volume of short stories from this commercially and culturally vital and vibrant center of the Arab world. Life before o...
Yusuf Idris (1927 91), who belonged to the same generation of pioneering Egyptian writers as Naguib Mahfouz and Tawfiq al-Hakim, is widely celebrated as the father of the Arabic short story. He studied and practiced medicine, but his interests were in politics and the support of the nationalist struggle, and in writing and his writing, whether in his regular newspaper columns or in his fiction, often reflected his political convictions. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature more than once, and when the prize went to Naguib Mahfouz in 1988, Idris felt that he had been passed over...
Yusuf Idris (1927 91), who belonged to the same generation of pioneering Egyptian writers as Naguib Mahfouz and Tawfiq al-Hakim, is widely celebrated ...
The importance of Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898 to 1989) to the emergence of a modern Arabic literature is second only to that of Naguib Mahfouz. If the latter put the novel among the genres of writing that are now an accepted part of literary production in the Arab world today, Tawfiq al-Hakim is recognized as the undisputed creator of a literature of the theater. In this volume, Tawfiq al-Hakim's fame as a playwright is given prominence. Of the more than seventy plays he wrote, The Sultan's Dilemma, dealing with a historical subject in an appealingly light-hearted manner, is perhaps the best known;...
The importance of Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898 to 1989) to the emergence of a modern Arabic literature is second only to that of Naguib Mahfouz. If the latte...
Short story writing in Egypt was still in its infancy when Denys Johnson-Davies, described by Edward Said as "the leading Arabic-English translator of our time," arrived in Cairo as a young man in the 1940s. Nevertheless, he was immediately impressed by such writing talents of the time as Mahmoud Teymour, Yahya Hakki, Yusuf Gohar, and the future Nobel literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz, and he set about translating their works for local English-language periodicals of the time. He continued to translate over the decades, and sixty years later he brings together this remarkable overview of...
Short story writing in Egypt was still in its infancy when Denys Johnson-Davies, described by Edward Said as "the leading Arabic-English translator of...
