Description

The first Arabic language writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Naguib Mahfouz helped bring Arabic writing to an international readership. This collection of his early writing, from his time as a philosophy student, reveals the intellectual ferment of the young author, grappling with two millennia of philosophers and writers and establishing his own voice among them.

Available in English for the first time, these essays tackle a vast array of subjects, from pre-Socratic Philosophy to love and the sexual impulse. The intellectual development demonstrated here forms the foundation of Mahfouz’s literary work, granting insight into the mind behind such famed works as The Cairo Trilogy and Children of The Alley.

Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) is often named as the greatest Arab writer of the twentieth century. He is the author of over thirty novels, including The Cairo Trilogy and Children of the Alley. In 1988 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Rasheed el-Enany is Professor Emeritus of Modern Arabic Literature, University of Exeter, He has authored several books on Mahfouz, including Naguib Mahfouz: His Life and Times.

Aran Byrne completed a master’s degree in Oriental studies at the University of Oxford. He was co-translator of Democracy is the Answer by the best-selling Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany.