Essays and Features

Heads nodded in agreement, but the mood was somber. Halim Barakat had just kicked off a two-day conference on the Arab novel by noting that more than 100 Arabic novels had been translated into English. Alas, he said, they were seldom reviewed in literary journals, nor could you easily find them in your neighborhood bookstore.

Mahfouz wrote 45 books throughout his life, containing diverse artistic and cultural wealth within those works. Mahfouz’s writings displayed certain characteristic features which distinguish this comprehensive intellectual, observer, and visionary who expressed in his books an intellectual, modernist, and progressive position -- sometimes firm, sometimes flexible.