Naguib Mahfouz – författare

THE ACCLAIMED INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER FROM THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR.'A masterpiece' - The Times'Shamelessly entertaining' - GuardianThe sensual and provocative second book in the classic Cairo Trilogy, Palace Of Desire follows the Al Jawad family into the awakening world of the 1920's and the sometimes violent clash between Islamic ideals, personal dreams and modern realities.Having given up his vices after his son's death, ageing patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad pursues a bewitching lute-player - only for her to marry his eldest son. His rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination as they test the loosening reins of societal and parental control. And Ahmad's youngest son, in an unforgettable portrayal of unrequited love, falls for the sophisticated daughter of a rich Europeanised family.A vivid portrait of a family and a country in a time of upheaval, the Cairo Trilogy is the greatest and best loved work by the 20th century's most important Arab novelist.

THE ACCLAIMED INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER BY THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR.'A masterpiece' - The Times'The Arab Tolstoy' - Simon Sebag MontefioreSugar Street, the climactic final book in the classic Cairo Trilogy, is the captivating story of a family struggling to change with the rise of modern Egypt. As Cairo shrugs off the final vestiges of colonialism, Ahmad Al Jawad has lost his power and surveys the world from a latticed balcony. Unable to control his family's destiny, he watches helplessly as his dynasty and the traditions he holds dear disintegrate before his eyes.But through Ahamd's three grandsons we see modern how Egypt takes shape. One grandson is a communist activist, another a Muslim fundamentalist, both working for what they believe will be a better world. And Ridwan, the inheritor of his father's charms, launches a political career aided by a homosexual affair with prominent politician.A vivid portrait of a family and a country in a time of upheaval, the Cairo Trilogy is the greatest and best loved work by the 20th century's most important Arab novelist.

THE ACCLAIMED INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER BY THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR.'A masterpiece' - The Times'The Arab Tolstoy' - Simon Sebag Montefiore'Shamelessly entertaining' - Guardian'Luminous' - New York TimesA sweeping and evocative portrait of both a family and a country struggling to move toward independence in a society that has resisted change for centuries. Set against the backdrop of Britain's occupation of Egypt immediately after World War I, Palace Walk introduces us to the Al Jawad family.Ahmad, a middle-class shopkeeper runs his household strictly according to the Qur'an while at night he explores the pleasures of Cairo. A tyrant at home, Ahmad forces his gentle, oppressed wife and two daughters to live cloistered lives behind the house's latticed windows, while his three very different sons live in fear of his harsh will.The first book of the classic Cairo Trilogy, the greatest and best loved work by the 20th century's most important Arab novelist.

Tre av pensionatsgästerna tillhör en yngre generation. En av dem är en Dostojevskijgestalt, en annan opererar på svarta börsen. Berättaren, en äldre journalist, som avsagt sig världen och söker ro på pensionatet, får ett ? bara alltför schematiskt ? exempel på tidens förbistring och tycker sig se världen som i en spegel. Alldeles uppbygglig är bilden inte. Den visar förräderi, opportunism, lyxbegär och cynism. Men mitt i denna depraverade halvvärld rör sig den renhjärtade Zahra, bondflickan som på samma gång inkarnerar det genuina Egypten och är omgiven av ett nästan överjordiskt ljus. Kanske har hon rentav något av Indras dotter och man erinrar sig Mahfouz uttalande: ?Skrivandet är min unga fästmö?. Miramar är en klassiker från 60-talets Egypten.

Jag inser det orimliga i att föreslå att denna djupt mänskliga, finstämda och ironiska roman görs till obligatorisk läsning på våra statliga verk. Men nog gjorde mången byrådirektör klokt i att ge bort ?Respektable herrn? i julklapp till strebrar i hierarkin. Gabi Gleichmann, Expressen

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.

'A master of both detailed realism and fabulous storytelling’ GUARDIANFROM THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR – WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HISHAM MATARAfter an assassination attempt and in waning health, Naguib Mahfouz became more cautious in his twilight years. At the same time, in nightly dreams, his imagination began to roam his beloved city, Cairo, with a rare freedom.In this collection of vivid vignettes linked together by the author’s precisely rendered nocturnal wanderings through Cairo, figures from Mahfouz’s personal life blend with his anxieties about Egypt’s political past and future.Each dream is layered with philosophical and spiritual musings, hopes and disappointments. Over the course of the book, they build to a rich and complex picture of Mahfouz’s subconscious.'The Arab world's foremost novelist' NEW YORK TIMES'Freshly nuanced and hauntingly lyrical' LOS ANGELES TIMES'A towering literary figure' ECONOMIST

At the center of Khufu’s Wisdom, Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s majestic first novel, is the legendary Fourth Dynasty monarch Khufu (Cheops), for whom the Great Pyramid of Giza was built.

 When a seer prophesies the end of Khufu’s dynasty and the ascension to the throne of Djedefra, son of the High Priest of Ra, the pharaoh must battle to preserve his legacy against the will of the Fates. But in the face of the inexorable attraction between Djedefra and Princess Meresankh, Khufu’s beautiful daughter, Khufu must consider not only his personal ambition and the opposing decree of the heavens, but also how the wisdom he prides himself on as a ruler will guide him in determining the fate of his daughter’s heart.Translated by Raymond Stock

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz mines the riches of his homeland’s ancient past in Rhadopis of Nubia, an unforgettable love story set against the high politics of Egypt’s Sixth Dynasty.While the ravishing courtesan Rhadopis is bathing, a falcon lifts one of her golden sandals and drops it into the lap of the Pharaoh Merenra II. Upon hearing Rhadopis described as “beauty itself,” the young pharaoh decides to return Rhadopis’s sandal himself. When the two meet, they are immediately seized by a passion far stronger than their ability to resist. Thus begins a love affair that makes them the envy of Egyptian society. But blinded by their love and the extravagant attentions they lavish on each other, they ignore the growing resentment of the world around them in this extraordinary tale of star-crossed love.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Known and loved throughout Egypt as a work that celebrates the national character, Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s Thebes at War tells of a high point in Egyptian history–ancient Egypt’s defeat of Asiatic foreigners who had dominated northern Egypt for two hundred years.With a visit from a court official and a provocative insult, the southern pharaoh’s long simmering resentment boils over, leading him to commit himself and his heirs to an epic struggle for the throne. Filled with the grand clash of armies, staggering defeats, daring escapes, and glorious victories, and written at a time when Egypt was again under the sway of foreign powers, Thebes at War is a resounding call to remember Egypt’s long and noble history.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz reaches back millennia to his homeland’s majestic past in this enchanting collection of early tales that brings the world of ancient Egypt face to face with our own times.From the Predynastic Period, where a cabal of entrenched rulers banish virtue in jealous defense of their status, to the Fifth Dynasty, where a Pharaoh returns from an extended leave to find that only his dog has remained loyal, to the twentieth century, where a mummy from the Eighteenth Dynasty awakens in fury to reproach a modern Egyptian nobleman for his arrogance, these five stories conduct timeless truths over the course of thousands of years. Summoning the power and mystery of a legendary civilization, they examplify the artistry that has made Mahfouz among the most revered writers in world literature.Translated by Raymond StockFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and author of the Cairo Trilogy, comes Akhenaten, a fascinating work of fiction about the most infamous pharaoh of ancient Egypt.In this beguiling  novel, originally published in Arabic in 1985, Mahfouz tells with extraordinary insight the story of the "heretic pharaoh," or "sun king,"--the first known monotheistic ruler--whose iconoclastic and controversial reign during the 18th Dynasty (1540-1307 B.C.) has uncanny resonance with modern sensibilities.  Narrating the novel is a young man with a passion for the truth, who questions the pharaoh''s contemporaries after his horrible death--including Akhenaten''s closest friends, his most bitter enemies, and finally his enigmatic wife, Nefertiti--in an effort to discover what really happened in those strange, dark days at Akhenaten''s court. As our narrator and each of the subjects he interviews contribute their version of Akhenaten, "the truth" becomes increasingly evanescent.  Akhenaten encompasses all of the contradictions his subjects see in him: at once cruel and empathic, feminine and barbaric, mad and divinely inspired, his character, as Mahfouz imagines him, is eerily modern, and fascinatingly ethereal.  An ambitious and exceptionally lucid and accessible book, Akhenaten is a work only Mahfouz could render so elegantly, so irresistibly.From the Trade Paperback edition.

From the Nobel Prize laureate and author of the acclaimed Cairo Trilogy, a beguiling and artfully compact novel set in Sadat''s Egypt.The time is 1981, Anwar al-Sadat is president, and Egypt is lurching into the modern world. Set against this backdrop, The Day the Leader Was Killed relates the tale of a middle-class Cairene family. Rich with irony and infused with political undertones, the story is narrated alternately by the pious and mischievous family patriarch Muhtashimi Zayed, his hapless grandson Elwan, and Elwan''s headstrong and beautiful fiancee Randa.  The novel reaches its climax with the assassination of Sadat on October 6, 1981, an event around which the fictional plot is skillfully woven. The Day the Leader Was Killed brings us the essence of Mahfouz''s genius and is further proof that he has, in the words of the Nobel citation, "formed an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind."From the Trade Paperback edition.

Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz draws on his homeland’s rich engagement with the afterlife–and his own near-death experience at the hands of a would-be assassin–in these newly translated, brilliantly mysterious stories of the supernatural.

 Among those who haunt these tales are the ghosts of Akhenaten, Woodrow Wilson, and Gamal Abd al-Nasser, who endure a strange system of earthly probation in the hope of gaining entry to the fabled Seventh Heaven; a teenager drawn into the secret, enchanted life he finds within his neighborhood’s forbidden wood; an honest perfume seller accosted on a night out by angry skeletons; and Satan himself, who confesses that there is still, despite the flood of evil in our times, an honorable man in the land. As ingenious at capturing the surreal as he is at documenting the very real social landscape of modern Cairo, Mahfouz guides these restless spirits as they migrate from the shadowy realms of other worlds to the haunted precincts of our own.Translated by Raymond Stock

From the Trade Paperback edition.

 

From Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz: the three magnificent novels—published in an omnibus edition for the first time—that form an ancient-Egyptian counterpart to his famous Cairo Trilogy.

 

Mahfouz reaches back thousands of years to bring us tales from his homeland''s majestic early history—tales of the Egyptian nobility and of war, star-crossed love, and the divine rule of the pharoahs. In Khufu''s Wisdom, the legendary Fourth Dynasty monarch faces the prospect of the end of his rule and the possibility that his daughter has fallen in love with the man prophesied to be his successor. Rhadopis of Nubia is the unforgettable story of the charismatic young Pharoah Merenra II and the ravishing courtesan Rhadopis, whose love affair makes them the envy of all Egyptian society. And Thebes at War tells the epic story of Egypt''s victory over the Asiatic foreigners who dominated the country for two centuries.

 

Three Novels of Ancient Egypt gives us a dazzling tapestry of ancient Egypt and reminds us of the remarkable artistry of Naguib Mahfouz.(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

From the Hardcover edition.

In Naguib Mahfouz''s suspenseful novel a bitter and ambitious nihilist, a beautiful and impoverished student, and a corrupt official engage in a doomed ménage à trois.Cairo of the 1930s is a place of vast social and economic inequities. It is also a time of change, when the universities have just opened to women and heady new philosophies imported from Europe are stirring up debates among the young. Mahgub is a fiercely proud student who is determined to keep both his poverty and his lack of principles secret from his idealistic friends. When he finds that there are no jobs for those without connections, out of desperation he agrees to participate in an elaborate deception. But what begins as a mere strategy for survival soon becomes much more for both Mahgub and his partner in crime, an equally desperate young woman named Ihsan. As they make their way through Cairo''s lavish high society their precarious charade begins to unravel and the terrible price of Mahgub''s Faustian bargain becomes clear. Translated by William M. HutchinsFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

In this gripping and suspenseful novella from the Egyptian Nobel Prize-winner, three young friends survive interrogation by the secret police, only to find their lives poisoned by suspicion, fear, and betrayal. At a Cairo café in the 1960s, a legendary former belly dancer lovingly presides over a boisterous family of regulars, including a group of idealistic university students. One day, amid reports of a wave of arrests, three of the students disappear: the excitable Hilmi, his friend Ismail, and Ismail''s beautiful girlfriend Zaynab. When they return months later, they are apparently unharmed and yet subtly and profoundly changed. It is only years later, after their lives have been further shattered, that the narrator pieces together the young people''s horrific stories and learns how the government used them against one another. In a riveting final chapter, their torturer himself enters the Café and sits among his former victims, claiming a right to join their society of the disillusioned. Now translated into English for the first time, Naguib Mahfouz''s tale of the insidious effects of government-sanctioned torture and the suspension of rights and freedoms in a time of crisis is shockingly contemporary.From the Trade Paperback edition.

This unusual epic from the Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz portrays five generations of one sprawling family against the upheavals of two centuries of modern Egyptian history.Set in Cairo, Morning and Evening Talk traces three related families from the arrival of Napoleon to the 1980s, through short character sketches arranged in alphabetical order. This highly experimental device produces a kind of biographical dictionary, whose individual entries come together to paint a vivid portrait of life in Cairo from a range of perspectives. The characters include representatives of every class and human type and as the intricate family saga unfolds, a powerful picture of a society in transition emerges. This is a tale of change and continuity, of the death of a traditional way of life and the road to independence and beyond, seen through the eyes of Egypt''s citizens. Naguib Mahfouz''s last chronicle of Cairo is both an elegy to a bygone era and a tribute to the Egyptian spirit.From the Trade Paperback edition.