Essays of the Sadat Era: The Non-Fiction of Naguib Mahfouz: Volume II - Paperback

by Naguib Mahfouz (Author), Aran Byrne (Translator), Russell Harris (Translator)

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 within its confines, runs through this fascinating body of nonfiction writing. Nonetheless, Mahfouz's own thoughts are unmistakably present. We gain his insight into diverse political topics, such as socioeconomic class, democracy and dictatorship, and Islam and extremism, topics which still seem highly pertinent to the situation in Egypt today.

A vital accompaniment to his literature, this collected work is contemporaneous with Mahfouz's fictional works such as Karnak Café, The Harafish, and Arabian Nights and Days. Essays of the Sadat Era is the second of four volumes in which Mahfouz's nonfiction work is translated into English for the first time.

Author Biography

Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) was the greatest Arab writer of the twentieth century. Born in the old Islamic Quarter of Cairo in 1911, he began writing when he was seventeen before entering university to study as a student of philosophy in 1930. He is the author of over thirty novels. In 1988, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Rasheed El-Enany is the dean of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities and professor of Arabic and comparative literature at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. He is also professor emeritus of modern Arabic literature at the University of Exeter, where he became director of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. He has authored several books on Naguib Mahfouz, including Naguib Mahfouz. His Life and Times. Aran Byrne studied Arabic and Persian at SOAS, University of London, and completed a master's degree in Oriental studies at the University of Oxford. In addition to On Literature and Philosophy, he was co-translator of Democracy is the Answer by the best-selling Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany. Russell Harris holds an MA in Oriental Studies from Balliol College, Oxford, and is an established translator of literary works from French and Arabic. He is a contributor to The Encyclopaedia Islamica for the Institute of Ismaili Studies and has written many articles on Middle Eastern art for international journals and magazines.