Naguib Mahfouz Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of The Cairo Trilogy Books
Palace Walk | (2011) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Palace of Desire | (2011) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Sugar Street | (2011) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
Khufu's Wisdom | (1939) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Rhadopis of Nubia | (1943) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Thebes at War | (1944) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Marketplace Called Khan Il Khalili | (1945) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Cairo Modern | (1945) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Khan Al-Khalili | (1945) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Midaq Alley | (1947) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Madak Alley/Arabic | (1947) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Mirage | (1948) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Beginning and the End | (1949) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Children of Gebelaawi | (1959) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Children of the Alley | (1959) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Thief and the Dogs | (1961) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Autumn Quail | (1962) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Search | (1964) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Whisperings on the NileArabic Novel | (1966) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Adrift on the Nile | (1966) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Miramar | (1967) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Road: Al Tareeq | (1970) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Honeymoon | (1971) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Mirrors | (1972) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Love in the Rain | (1973) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Karnak Café | (1974) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Fountain and Tomb | (1975) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Heart of the Night | (1975) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Respected Sir | (1975) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Harafish | (1977) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Arabian Nights and Days | (1979) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Wedding Song | (1981) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Journey of Ibn Fattouma | (1983) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Day the Leader Was Killed | (1983) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Before the Throne | (1983) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Akhenaten | (1985) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Morning and Evening Talk | (1987) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Beggar | (1990) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Egyptian Time | (1992) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Coffeehouse | (2010) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
Publication Order of Collections
God's World | (1962) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Tales of the Black Cat | (1969) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Stories of the Neighborhood | (1975) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Collection Of His Famous Works | (1985) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Time and the Place | (1991) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Voices from the Other World | (2002) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Dreams | (2004) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Seventh Heaven | (2005) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Quarter | (2019) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
Echoes of an Autobiography | (1994) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Naguib Mahfouz at Sidi Gaber | (2001) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
On Literature and Philosophy | (2003) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
On Art, Literature and History | (2016) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Essays of the Sadat Era | (2016) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Meaning of Civilization | (2017) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Early Mubarak Years 1982-1989 | (2020) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
After the Nobel Prize 1989-1994 | (2020) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
The Non-Fiction Writing of Naguib Mahfouz 1930–1994 | (2021) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Chronicles Abroad Books
Cairo | (1994) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Venice | (1994) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Prague: Tales of the City | (1994) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Hong Kong | (1994) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
St. Petersburg | (1995) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Istanbul | (1995) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Publication Order of Anthologies
Flash Fiction International | (2015) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Writers: Their Lives and Works | (2018) | Hardcover Paperback Kindle |
Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz was born December 11, 1911 in Cairo, Khedivate of Egypt and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers in Arabic Literature to explore themes of existentialism. He’s the only Egyptian to ever win the Nobel in Literature.
He was born in a lower middle class Muslim Egyptian family in Old Cairo. He was the seventh and youngest child, with four brothers and two sisters, all of whom were a lot older than him. As a result, he grew up as an “only child”, in a way.
His family were devout Muslims and he had a strict Islamic upbringing. He once stated that you’d never have believed an artist would emerge from such a family, it was that stern of a religious climate.
After he got his bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Cairo University in the year 1934, he joined the Egyptian civil service, where he continue working in various ministries and positions until he retired in the year 1971. He first served as a clerk at Cairo University, then, in the year 1938, in the Ministry of Islamic Endowments as a parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Islamic Endowments.
In the year 1945, he asked for a transfer to the al-Ghuri Mausoleum library, where he interviewed residents of his childhood neighborhood as part of the “Good Loans Project”.
During the 50s, he worked as a Director of Censorship in the Bureau of Arts, as Director of the Foundation for the Support of the Cinema, and lastly as a consultant to the Ministry of Culture.
He published five plays, more than 350 short stories, 34 novels, and dozens of movie scripts over his 70-plus year career as a writer.
His novel “Adrift on the Nile” was made into a film called “Chitchat on the Nile”. Many of his works have been adapted into Egyptian and foreign language films, with no Arab writer surpasses Mahfouz in number of works which have been adapted for television nd cinema.
His style of prose is characterized by the blunt expression of his ideas. His written works cover a broad range of topics, which include the taboo and controversial such as homosexuality, God, and socialism. Writing about some such topics were prohibited in Egypt.
Mahfouz stayed a bachelor until the age of 43 because he thought that, with its numerous limitations and restrictions, marriage would only hamper his literary future. He was very afraid of marriage, particularly when he saw how busy his sisters and brothers were with social events as a result of it. One went to visit people, another invited people over. Mahfouz had the impression that married life would take up all of his time. He saw himself drowning in visits and parties, without any freedom.
But in 1954, he quietly married a Coptic Orthodox woman, with whom he had two daughters. The couple originally lived on a houseboat in the Agouza section of Cairo on the west bank of the Nile, and then they moved to an apartment along the river in the same area.
He avoided public exposure, particularly inquiries into his personal life, which may have become, like he put it, “a silly topic in radio programs and journals”.
He distinctly never liked traveling. But Belgrade was one of the very few cities that he gladly went and expressed a great deal of respect for Serbia.
Mahfouz died at the age of 94 on August 30, 2006 in Agouza, Egypt.
“Palace Walk”, “Palace of Desire”, and “Sugar Street make up the “Cairo Trilogy”. Naguib’s magnificent epic trilogy about colonial Egypt shows up here in a single volume for the first time. This Nobel Prize winning writer’s masterwork is the engrossing tale about a Muslim family in Cairo during Britain’s occupation of Egypt during the early decades of the 20th century.
The novels of this trilogy trace three generations of the family of the tyrannical patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his house with a strict hand as he lives a secret life filled with self-indulgence. “Peace Walk” introduces use to Amina, his gentle and oppressed wife; Khadija and Aisha, his cloistered daughters. And his three sons: the dissolute hedonist Yasin, the idealistic and tragic Fahmy, and Kamal, the soul-searching intellectual.
Al-Sayyid Ahmad’s rebellious kids struggle to move beyond any of his domination in “Palace of Desire”, while the world all around them opens up to the currents of modernity and domestic and political turmoil brought by the 1920s.
“Sugar Street” brings his vivid tapestry of an evolving Egypt to its dramatic climax while this aging patriarch sees one grandson become a Muslim fundamentalist, one become a Communist, and one the lover of this powerful politician.
Throughout this trilogy, the family’s trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years that span the two World Wars, while change comes to a society which had been resisting it for centuries. Filled with remarkable insight, compelling drama, and earthy humor, “The Cairo Trilogy” is the achievement of one master storyteller.
“The Thief and the Dogs” is a stand alone novel and was released in 1970. Naguib’s haunting novella bout post-revolutionary Egypt combines a vivid psychological portrait of one anguished man with the suspense and rapid pacing of a detective story.
After spending four years in prison, Said Mahran, the skilled young thief, emerges bent on getting revenge. He finds a world that has changed in more ways than just the one. Egypt has undergone a revolution and, on a much more personal level, his trusted henchman and his beloved wife, the former of whom conspired to betray him to the cops, have gotten married to each other and keep his six year old daughter away from him.
However in the most bitter betrayal of all, Rauf Ilwan, his mentor, formerly a firebrand revolutionary that convinced Said that stealing from the rich in an unjust society is an act of justice, now himself is a rich man. As he is a respected newspaper editor that wants nothing at all to do with the now disgraced Said. While Said’s wild efforts to achieve his idea of justice misfire horribly, he becomes a hunted man that is driven by hatred so much that he can just recognize his final chance at redemption once it’s too late.
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