The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk / Palace of Desire / Sugar Street
Naguib Mahfouz’s magnificent epic trilogy of colonial Egypt appears here in one volume for the first time. The Nobel Prize—winning writer’s masterwork is the engrossing story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Britain’s occupation of Egypt in the early decades of the twentieth century. The...
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Naguib Mahfouz’s magnificent epic trilogy of colonial Egypt appears here in one volume for the first time. The Nobel Prize—winning writer’s masterwork is the engrossing story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Britain’s occupation of Egypt in the early decades of the twentieth century. The novels of The Cairo Trilogy trace three generations of the family of tyrannical patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence. Palace Walk introduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons–the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. Al-Sayyid Ahmad’s rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination in Palace of Desire, as the world around them opens to the currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoil brought by the 1920s. Sugar Street brings Mahfouz’s vivid tapestry of an evolving Egypt to a dramatic climax as the aging patriarch sees one grandson become a Communist, one a Muslim fundamentalist, and one the lover of a powerful politician. Throughout the trilogy, the family’s trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years spanning the two World Wars, as change comes to a society that has resisted it for centuries. Filled with compelling drama, earthy humor, and remarkable insight, The Cairo Trilogy is the achievement of a master storyteller.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780375413315 (0375413316)
ASIN: 375413316
Publish date: October 16th 2001
Publisher: Everyman's Library
Pages no: 1368
Edition language: English
Category:
Classics,
Novels,
Literature,
Cultural,
Africa,
Historical Fiction,
Literary Fiction,
Modern,
Nobel Prize,
Egypt,
African Literature,
Egyptian Literature
Series: The Cairo Trilogy (#1)
This is the second time I have read this sprawling family saga. At 1313 pages..it's huge.but it's THAT good..
This is the second time I have read this sprawling family saga. At 1313 pages..it's huge.but it's THAT good..
First included in Everyman's Library 2001. Palace Walk was originally published in Arabic 1956 under the title Bayn-al-Qasrayn.Palace of Desire was originally published in Arabic 1957 under the title Qasr al-Shawq.Sugar Street was originally published in Arabic in 1957 under the titile al-Sukkariyya...