Naguib Mahfouz était un écrivain égyptien dont les œuvres explorent souvent de profondes questions sociales et politiques. Son vaste corpus, comprenant des romans, des nouvelles et des scénarios, pénètre au cœur de la société égyptienne et de la psyché humaine. À travers son style distinctif, il saisit les complexités de la vie et la recherche d'identité dans un monde en mutation. Son héritage littéraire résonne au-delà des frontières de l'Égypte, inspirant les lecteurs à contempler des thèmes universels.
Tour à tour mystiques, désabusées, absurdes, nostalgiques, réalistes ou drôles, ces nouvelles, extraites de neuf recueils publiés entre 1962 et 1996, offrent une vision kaléidoscopique de l'Egypte contemporaine.
Le point de vue de l'éditeur La rue d'Al-Nahhasin n'était pas une rue calme ... La harangue des camelots, le marchandage des clients, les invocations des illuminés de passage, les plaisanteries des chalands s'y fondaient en un concert de voix pointues ... Les questions les plus privées en pénétraient les moindres recoins, s'élevaient jusqu'à ses minarets ... Pourtant, une clameur soudaine s'éleva, d'abord lointaine, comme le mugissement des vagues, elle commença à s'enfler, s'amplifier, jusqu'à ressembler à la plainte sibilante du vent ... Elle semblait étrange, insolite, même dans cette rue criante ... C'est ici, dans les rues du Caire, que Naguib Mahfouz, le Zola du Nil, a promené son miroir et capté toutes les facettes d'une société égyptienne en pleine évolution. Naguib Mahfouz est le premier écrivain de langue arabe à avoir reçu, en 1988, le prix Nobel de Littérature.
Mahfouz's epic trilogy unfolds the story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Egypt's British occupation in the early to mid-20th century. This masterwork, presented in one volume for the first time, captures the lives of the family led by the tyrannical patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who enforces strict control while indulging in secret pleasures. In Palace Walk, we meet his gentle, oppressed wife Amina, his cloistered daughters Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons: the tragic idealist Fahmy, the hedonistic Yasin, and the introspective Kamal. As the narrative progresses to Palace of Desire, the rebellious children strive to break free from their father's domination amid the modernizing influences and political upheaval of the 1920s. Sugar Street culminates the trilogy with a dramatic climax, showcasing the aging patriarch witnessing the divergent paths of his grandsons—one a Communist, another a Muslim fundamentalist, and the third a lover of a powerful politician. Throughout the trilogy, the family's struggles reflect the broader turmoil of their country during the two World Wars, as society grapples with change after centuries of resistance. Rich in drama, humor, and insight, this work exemplifies the artistry of a master storyteller.
A series of historical fiction based on the life of a family living in Cairo during the British Colonial period and afterward
The history of a Cairo alley through several generations. Successive heroes struggle to restore the rights of the people to the trust fund set up by their ancestor Gebelaawi, usurped by embezzlers and tyrants. Mahfouz creates in all its detail a world on the frontier between the real and the imaginary. At a deeper level, the book is an allegory whose heroes relive the lives of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Moses, Jesus and Muhammed. Their appearance in a modern context invites the reader to see them as human beings relevant to the present day, not as remote sacred figures - to the consternation of some traditionalists. Most controversial is the significance of Gebelaawi, the immensely long-lived patriarch. Mahfouz himself has said that his character represents 'not God, but a certain idea of God that men have made', standing for the god of those who forget the absolute transcendence of God affirmed by Islam.
The second volume of the highly acclaimed Cairo Trilogy from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Filled with compelling drama, earthy humor, and remarkable insight, Palace Of Desire is the unforgettable story of the violent clash between ideals and realities, dreams and desires.
Sugar Street is the third and concluding volume of the celebrated Cairo Trilogy, which brings the story of Al-Sayid Ahmad and his family up to the middle of the twentieth century.Aging and ill, the family patriarch surveys the world from his housewares's latticed balcony, as his long-suffering wife once did. While his children face middle age, it is through his grandsons that we see a modern Egypt emerging.
The Beggar, set in Cairo in the early 1950s, portrays the psychological torment of Omar, an ardent revolutionary in youth who in middle age has been left behind by Nasser's Revolution. His conscience has fled. As he struggles with psychological renewal, he sacrifices his work and his family to a series of illicit love affairs, which simply increase his alienation from himself and from the rest of the others. Mahfouz draws the reader not only inside the mind of the central character but also into the conscience of a nation as it tries to chart its course between the often contradictory realms of art and science, idealism and realism. The Swedish Academy of Letters in awarding Naguib Mahfouz the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature noted that Mahfouz "through works rich in nuance - now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous - has formed an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind."
Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz reaches back millennia to his homeland’s majestic past in this enchanting collection of early tales that brings the world of ancient Egypt face to face with our own times. From the Predynastic Period, where a cabal of entrenched rulers banish virtue in jealous defense of their status, to the Fifth Dynasty, where a Pharaoh returns from an extended leave to find that only his dog has remained loyal, to the twentieth century, where a mummy from the Eighteenth Dynasty awakens in fury to reproach a modern Egyptian nobleman for his arrogance, these five stories conduct timeless truths over the course of thousands of years. Summoning the power and mystery of a legendary civilization, they examplify the artistry that has made Mahfouz among the most revered writers in world literature. Translated by Raymond Stock From the Trade Paperback edition.
The saga of the al-Nagi family, tracing its rise from obscurity to power, to decadence, to rebirth. A mythic Egyptian tale with a soap opera plot by a Nobel Prize winner.
