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A major early novel by the Egyptian Nobel Laureate, published for the first time in English
The completion of Khan al-Khalili in 1945 marked a turning point in Naguib Mahfouz’s career. Departing from the traditional themes drawn from Egyptian antiquity that characterize the author’s earlier works, Khan al-Khalili reflects instead a deep concern with the lives and problems of contemporary Egyptians.
The time is 1942, the Second World War is at its height, and the Africa Campaign is raging along the northern coast of Egypt as far as El Alamein. Against this backdrop of international upheaval, the novel tells the story of the Akifs, a middle-class family that has taken refuge in Cairo’s historic and bustling Khan al-Khalili neighborhood. Believing that the German forces will never bomb such a famously religious part of the city, they seek safety among the crowded alleyways, busy cafés, and ancient mosques of the Khan, adjacent to the area where Mahfouz himself spent much of his young life. Through the eyes of Ahmad, the eldest Akif son and the novel’s central character, Mahfouz presents a richly textured vision of the Khan, drawing on his own memories to assemble a lively cast of characters whose world is framed by the sights, smells, and flavors of his childhood home. As Ahmad, a minor civil servant who has sacrificed both education and personal ambition in order to support his family, interacts with the people and traditions of Khan al-Khalili, a debate emerges that pits old against new, history against modernity, and faith against secularism. Addressing one of the fundamental questions of the modern era, Mahfouz asks whether, like the German bombs that threaten Khan al-Khalili daily, progress must necessarily be accompanied by the destruction of the past.
Fans of Midaq Alley, The Beginning and the End, and The Cairo Trilogy will not want to miss this engaging and sensitive portrayal of a family at the crossroads of the old world and the new.
PRAISE FOR NAGUIB MAHFOUZ:
"Mahfouz's work is freshly nuanced and hauntingly lyrical."—Los Angeles Times Book Review
"The Arab world's foremost novelist."—The New York Times
"A towering literary figure."—The Economist
"A master of both detailed realism and fabulous storytelling."—The Guardian
"Mahfouz is a storyteller of the first order in any idiom."—Vanity Fair
"The incredible variety of Naguib Mahfouz's writings continues to dazzle our eyes."—The Washington Post
Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) was born in the crowded Cairo district of Gamaliya. He wrote nearly 40 novel-length works, plus hundreds of short stories and numerous screenplays. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988.
Roger Allen is professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his translations are Naguib Mahfouz’s Mirrors (AUC Press, 1999) and Bensalem Himmich’s The Polymath (AUC Press, 2000).