Children Of Gebelaawi

First pub 1967. Draws on Jewish, Christian, and Islamic history for the plot in an allegory recounting the lives of the offspring of one man.

The tumultuous alley of this rich and intricate novel (first published in Arabic in 1959) is inhabited by a delightful Egyptian family, but is also the setting for a second, hidden, and more daring narrative: the spiritual history of humankind. The men and women of a modern Cairo neighborood unwittingly reenact the lives of their holy ancestors: from the feudal lord who disowns one son for diabolical pride and puts another to the test, to the savior of a succeeding generation who frees his people from bondage. This powerful novel confirms again the richness and variety of Mahfouz's storytelling and his status as "the single most important writer in modern Arabic literature" (Newsweek).

The story recreates the interlinked history of the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), allegorised against the setting of an imaginary 19th century Cairene alley. Critics claimed that Gabalawi stands for God. Mahfouz rejected this, saying that he stood for "a certain idea of God that men have made" and that "Nothing can represent God. God is not like anything else. God is gigantic." The first four sections retell, in succession, the stories of: Adam and how he was favoured by Gabalawi over the latter's other sons, including the eldest Satan/Iblis. In subsequent generations the heroes relive the lives of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. The followers of each hero settle in different parts of the alley, symbolising Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The protagonist of the book's fifth section is Arafa, who symbolises modern science and comes after the prophets, while all of their followers claim Arafa as one of their own. Central to the plot are the futuwwat (plural of futuwwa, 'strongman'), who control the alley and exact protection money from the people. The successive heroes overthrow the strongmen of their time, but in the next generation new strongmen spring up and things are as bad as ever. Arafa tries to use his knowledge of explosives to destroy the strongmen, but his attempts to discover Gabalawi's secrets leads to the death of the old man (though he does not directly kill him). The Chief Strongman guesses the truth and blackmails Arafa into helping him to become the dictator of the whole Alley. The book ends, after the murder of Arafa, with his friend searching in a rubbish tip for the book in which Arafa wrote his secrets. The people say "Oppression must cease as night yields to day. We shall see the end of tyranny and the dawn of miracles."

Widely acclaimed as Naguib Mahfouz's best novel, Midaq Alley brings to life one of the hustling, teeming back alleys of Cairo in the 1940s. From Zaita the cripple-maker to Kirsha the hedonistic cafe owner, from Abbas the barber who mistakes greed for love to Hamida who sells her soul to escape the alley, from waiters and widows to politicians, pimps, and poets, the inhabitants of Midaq Alley vividly evoke Egypt's largest city as it teeters on the brink of change. Never has Nobel Prize-winner Mahfouz's talent for rich and luxurious storytelling been more evident than here, in his portrait of one small street as a microcosm of the world on the threshold of modernity.

An award-winning account of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s most controversial novel and the fierce debates that it provoked Naguib Mahfouz’s novel Children of the Alley has been in the spotlight since it was first published in Egypt in 1959. It has been at times banned and at others allowed, sold sometimes under the counter and sometimes openly on the street, often pirated and only recently legally reprinted. It has inspired anxiety among the secular authorities, rage within the religious right, and a drawing of battle lines among Arab intellectuals and writers. It dogged Mahfouz like a curse throughout the remainder of his career, led to his attempted assassination, and sparked a public debate that continues to this day, even after the author’s death in 2006. It is Egypt’s iconic novel, in whose mirror millions have seen themselves, their society, and even the universe, some finding truth, others blasphemy. In this award-winning account, Mohamed Shoair traces the story of Mahfouz’s novel as a cultural and political object, from its first publication to the present via Mahfouz’s award of the Nobel prize for literature in 1988 and the attempt on his life in 1994. He presents the arguments that swirled about the novel and the wide cast of Egyptian figures, from state actors to secular intellectuals and Islamists, who took part in them. He also contextualizes the interactions among the principal characters, interactions that have done much to shape the country’s present. Extensively researched and written in a lucid, accessible style, The Story of the Banned Book is both a gripping work of investigative journalism and a window onto some of the fiercest debates around culture and religion to have taken place in Egyptian society over the past half-century.

Meet the people of Cairo's Gamaliya quarter. There is Nabqa, son of Adam the waterseller who can only speak truths; the beautiful and talented Tawhida who does not age with time; Ali Zaidan, the gambler, late to love; and Boss Saqr who stashes his money above the bath. A neighbourhood of demons, dancing and sweet halva, the quarter keeps quiet vigil over the secrets of all who live there. This collection by pre-eminent Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz was recently discovered among his old papers. Found with a slip of paper titled 'for publishing 1994', they are published here for the first time. Resplendent with Mahfouz's delicate and poignant observations of everyday happenings, these lively stories take the reader deep into the beating heart of Cairo.

2025: fourteen years after the failed revolution, Egypt is invaded once more. As traumatized Egyptians eke out a feral existence in Cairo's dusty downtown, former cop Ahmed Otared joins a group of fellow officers seeking Egypt's liberation through the barrel of a gun. As Cairo becomes a foul cauldron of drugs, sex, and senseless violence, Otared finally understands his country's fate. In this unflinching and grisly novel, Mohammad Rabie envisages a grim future for Egypt, where death is the only certainty.

The Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz refashions the classic tales of Scheherazade into a novel written in his 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.