Recommendations from our site
“I think first of all that it is a great literary treat. I believe it is a really captivating novel…In my view, what Mahfouz has done brilliantly is to dissect the rich life of the middle class of that multifaceted city and presented it to his readers; he made the readers experience what it feels like to be a middle-class family in the first half of the 20th century in Cairo. This was a very interesting time because Cairo was slowly shedding its conservative Islamic heritage and more or less embracing Westernism. Through tracing the three generations of the family at the centre of the novel you see the change.” Read more...
The best books on The Arab World
Tarek Osman, Foreign Correspondent
