About this item
Highlights
- Palace of Desire is the second novel in Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz's magnificent Cairo Trilogy, an epic family saga of colonial Egypt that is considered his masterwork.
- About the Author: Naguib Mahfouz was born in Cairo in 1911 and began writing when he was seventeen.
- 464 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
- Series Name: Cairo Trilogy
Description
About the Book
Continuing the story of al-Sayyid Ahmad and his family, this is a fascinating look at Egypt in the 1920s. Increased personal freedoms mix tenuously with traditions of family control, as two of Ahmad's sons court alluring women.Book Synopsis
Palace of Desire is the second novel in Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz's magnificent Cairo Trilogy, an epic family saga of colonial Egypt that is considered his masterwork.
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. In Palace of Desire, his rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination, as the world around them opens to the currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoil brought by the 1920s. Translated by William Maynard Hutchins, Lorne M. Kenny, and Olive E. Kenny.Review Quotes
"Mahfouz tells the story of Palace of Desire with sensitivity and humor, offering deep insights into the human condition." --Philadelphia Inquirer
"All the magic, mystery, and suffering of Egypt in the 1920s are conveyed on a human scale." --The New York Times Book Review "A grand novel of ideas. . . . A marvelous read." --The Washington Post "In Palace of Desire we see the intricate and complex tragedy of patriarchy working itself out through succeeding generations." --Chicago Tribune
About the Author
Naguib Mahfouz was born in Cairo in 1911 and began writing when he was seventeen. His nearly forty novels and hundreds of short stories range from re-imaginings of ancient myths to subtle commentaries on contemporary Egyptian politics and culture. Of his many works, most famous is The Cairo Trilogy, consisting of Palace Walk (1956), Palace of Desire (1957), and Sugar Street (1957), which focuses on a Cairo family through three generations, from 1917 until 1952. In 1988, he was the first writer in Arabic to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in August 2006.