Mahfouz Trilogy Three Novels of Ancient Egypt

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Three Novels of Ancient Egypt Khufu's Wisdom, Rhadopis of Nubia, Thebes at WarTranslated by Raymond Stock, Anthony Calderbank and Humphrey DaviesIntroduction by Nadine Gordimer"If the urge to write should ever leave me", Mahfouz said in an interview recently, "I want that day to be my last." The books' titles are taken from actual streets in Cairo, the city of Mahfouz's childhood and youth.The trilogy follows the life of the Cairene patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad and his family across three generations, from World War I to the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952.

Naguib Mahfouz was the first Arab winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the most prominent literary figure in the Arab world of the Twentieth Century. Best known for his Cairo Trilogy (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Walk), which became an international bestseller, he was born in Cairo in 1911 and lived in the suburb of Agouza with his wife and two daughters for the rest of his life. He published more than thirty novels as well as many collections of short stories, plays and screenplays. In 1994, after he published a novel that led him into trouble with Egypt's religious authorities, an attempt was made on his life, but he died peacefully in 2006, aged 94.

Who, through works rich in nuance - now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous - has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind * New York Times * The earliest novels are set in the Pharaonic milieu of ancient Egypt. But here already there are side-long glances at today's society. * Swedish Academy *