First Published in 2004. Naguib Mahfouz is one of the most important Arabic fiction writers of this century. Born in 1911, his long and prolific writing career represents the evolution of a novel genre in Arabic literature. His books are a record of the tragic tensions attendant on a nations's quest for freedom and modernity. In 1988 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. This book provides a comprehensive study of Mahfouz's achievement. Rasheed El-Enany presents a systemic evaluation of t...

This is one of the first books in English to explore Arab responses to Western culture and values in modern Arab literature. Through in-depth research El-Enany examines the attitudes as expressed mainly through works of fiction written by Arab authors during the twentieth, and, to a lesser extent, nineteenth century. It constitutes an original addition to the age-old East-West debate, and is particularly relevant to the current discussion on Islam and the West.Alongside raising hig...

Naguib Mahfouz, the Arab world’s only Nobel literature laureate, is best known internationally for his short stories and novels, including The Cairo Trilogy. But in Egypt he was equally familiar to newspaper readers for the column he wrote for many years in the leading daily Al-Ahram, in which he reflected on issues of the day from domestic and international events, politics, and economics to historic anniversaries, inspirational personalities, and questions of cultural f...

This volume of articles written by Naguib Mahfouz between 1971 and 1981 serves as a portrait of a volatile period in Egypt’s history, which began with the Corrective Revolution and the Yom Kippur War with Israel and ended with the assassination of President Anwar El-Sadat.In these essays of the Sadat era, published in the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper, Mahfouz seems an unreliable narrator. The tension between an author who rails against censorship, yet is bound wi...

The nonfiction writing of Naguib Mahfouz, presented in English for the first time.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.A...

Khan al-Khalili, by Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz, portrays the clash of old and new in an historic Cairo neighborhood as German bombs fall on the city.The time is 1942, World War II is at its height, and the Africa Campaign is raging along the northern coast of Egypt. Against this backdrop, Mahfouz’s novel tells the story of the Akifs, a middle-class family that has taken refuge in Cairo’s colorful and bustling Khan al-Khalili neighborhood. Believing that the Germ...

Perhaps the most important work in modern Iranian literature, this starkly beautiful novel examines the trials of an impoverished woman and her children living in a remote village in Iran, after the unexplained disappearance of her husband, Soluch.Lyrical yet unsparing, the novel examines her life as she contends with the political corruption, authoritarianism, and poverty of the village. It follows her vacillations between love for Soluch and anger at his absence, and her struggle...

This is a brilliant and revelatory first novel by a woman who is both an Arab and an American, who speaks with both voices and understands both worlds. Through the narratives of four cousins at the brink of maturity, Laila Halaby immerses her readers in the lives, friendships, and loves of girls struggling with national, ethnic, and sexual identities. Mawal is the stable one, living steeped in the security of Palestinian traditions in the West Bank. Hala is torn between two worlds-in love ...

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of The Kite Runner tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Khaled Hosseini's book.Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader.This short summary and analysis of The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini includes:Historical contextChapter-by-chapter summariesA...

Passionate and spiritual writings uncovering the philosophical foundations of one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkersKahlil Gibran's works are known throughout the world for their lyrical grandeur, wisdom, and insights drawn from the everyday sufferings of man. This nine-book collection captures one of modern history's titanic literary figures at his best. Texts such as "The Secret of the Heart," "Laughter and Tears," and "Song of the Flower" reveal the viv...

Shimon Adaf and Lavie Tidhar are two of Israel’s most subversive and politically outspoken writers. Growing up on opposite sides of the Israeli spectrum – Tidhar in the north of Israel in the Zion-ist, socialist Kibbutz; Adaf from a family of religious Mizrahi Jews living in Sderot – the two nevertheless shared a love of books, and were especially drawn to the strange visions and outrageous sensibilities of the science fiction that was available in Hebrew.In Art and War, t...

A groundbreaking collection of essays by celebrated international writers bears witness to the human cost of fifty years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.In Kingdom of Olives and Ash, Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, two of today's most renowned novelists and essayists, have teamed up with the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence-an organization comprised of former Israeli soldiers who served in the occupied territories and saw firsthand the injustice there-an...