Naguib Mahfouz: Three Novels of Ancient Egypt

The moral ambiguity of a love is overwhelmed by the moral ambiguities darkening the shed blood of even a just war. The day of struggle comes bearing all this, and Kamose with Ahmose eventually leads the Theban army to victory, the kingdom is restored to the Thebes.

Mahfouz like Thomas Mann is master of irony, with its tugging undertow of loss. Apophis and his people, his daughter, have left Memphis in defeat. It is a beautiful evening of peace. Ahmose and his wife Nefertari are on the palace balcony, overlooking the Nile. His fingers are playing with a golden chain. She notices: ‘How lovely! But it's broken.’ ‘Yes. It has lost its heart.’ ‘What a pity!’ In her innocent naivety, she assumes the chain is for her. But he says, “I have put aside for you something more precious and more beautiful than that… Nefertari, I want you to call me Isfinis, for it's a name I love and I love those who love it.'

‘Are you still writing?’

People whose retirement from working life has a date, set as the date of birth and the date of death yet to come, ask this question of a writer. But there's no trade union decision bound upon writers; they leave practising the art of the word only when their ability to transform with it something of the mystery of human life, leaves them.

Yes, in old age Naguib Mahfouz was still writing. Still finding new literary modes to express the changing consciousness of succeeding eras with which his genius created this trilogy and his entire oeuvre, novels and stories. In the rising babble of our millennium, radio, television, mobile phone, his mode for the written word is distillation. In a recent work, The Dreams, short prose evocations drawing on the fragmentary power of the subconscious, he is the narrator walking aimlessly where suddenly ‘every step I take turns the street upside-down into a circus'. At first he ‘could soar with joy', but when the spectacle is repeated over and over from street to street, “I long in my soul to go back to my home… and trust that soon my relief will arrive'. He opens his door and finds — ‘the clown there to greet me, giggling'. [3] Naguib Mahfouz, The Dreams (Dream 5), The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo/New York, 2005. No escape from the world and the writer's innate compulsion to dredge from its confusion, meaning.

This bibliography is confined to works available in English.

MEHAHEM MILSON, Naguib Matifouz: The Novelist-Philosopher of Cairo, St Martin Press, New York, 1998.

RASHEED EL-ENANY, Naguib Mahfouz: The Pursuit of Meaning, Routledge, London and New York, 1993.

MICHAEL BEARD and ADNAN HAYDAR, eds, Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 1993.

TREVOR LE GASSICK, ed., Critical Perspectives on Naguib Mahfouz, Three Continents Press, Washington DC, 1991.

HAIM GORDON, Naguib Mahfouz's Egypt: Existential Themes in his Writings, Greenwood Press, New York, 1990.

M. M. ENANi, ed., Egyptian Perspectives on Naguib Mahfouz: A Collection of Critical Essays, General Egyptian Book Organization, Cairo, 1989.

MATTITYAHU PELED, Religion My Own: The Literary Works of Najib Mah- fuz, Transaction Books, New Brunswick, 1983.

SASSON SOMEKH, The Changing Rhythm: A Study of Najib Mahfuz's Novels, E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1973.

E. M. FORSTER, Alexandria: A History and a Guide, Whitehead Morris Limited, Alexandria, 1922.

MATTi MOOSA, The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction, Three Continents Press, Washington, DC, 1983.

ALI B. JAD, Form and Technique in the Egyptian Novel fgis-igyi), Ithaca Press, London, 1983.

ROGER ALLEN, The Arabic Novel: An Historical and Critical Introduction, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 1982.

HILARY KILPATRICK, The Modern Egyptian Novel: A Study in Social Criticism, Ithaca Press, London, 1974.

HAMDI SAKKUT, The Egyptian Novel and its Main Trends (1913–1952), The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo, 1971. j. BRUGMAN, An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature in Egypt, E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1984.

CHARLES D. SMITH, Islam and the Search for Social Order in Modern Egypt: A Biography of Muhammad Husayn Haykal, State University of New York, Albany, 1983.

MARINA STAGH, The Limits of Freedom of Speech: Prose Literature and Prose Writers in Egypt under Nasser and Sadat, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm, 1994.

H. A. R. GIBB, Arabic Literature, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1963. ALBERT HOURANi, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age: 1798–1939, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962. p. j. VATiKiOTis, The History of Egypt, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1985.

A Novel of Ancient Egypt

Translated by Raymond Stock

The possessor of Divine Grandeur and Lordly Awe, Khufu, son of Khnum, reclined on his gilded couch, on the balcony of the antechamber overlooking his lush and far-flung palace garden. This paradise was immortal Memphis herself, the City of the White Walls. Around him was a band of his sons and his closest friends. His silken cloak with its golden trim glistened in the rays of the sun, which had begun its journey to the western horizon. He sat calmly and serenely, his back resting on cushions stuffed with ostrich feathers, his elbow embedded in a pillow whose silk cover was striped with gold. The mark of his majesty showed in his lofty brow and elevated gaze, while his overwhelming power was displayed by his broad chest, bulging forearms, and his proud, aquiline nose. He bore all the dignity of his two-score years, and the glorious aura of Pharaoh.

His piercing eyes ran back and forth between his sons and his companions, before shifting leisurely forward, where the sun was setting behind the tops of the date palms. Or they would turn toward the right, where they beheld in the distance that eternal plateau whose eastern side fell under the watchful gaze of the Great Sphinx, and in whose center reposed the mortal remains of his forebears. The plateau's surface was covered with hundreds and thousands of human forms. They were leveling its sand dunes and splitting up its rocks, digging out the mighty base for Pharaoh's pyramid — which he wanted to make a wonder in the eyes of humankind that would endure for all the ages.

Pharaoh cherished these family gatherings, which refreshed him from his weighty official duties, and lifted from his back the burden of habitual obligations. In them he became a companionable father and affectionate friend, as he and those closest to him took refuge in gossip and casual conversation. They discussed subjects both trivial and important, trading humorous stories, settling sundry affairs, and determining people's destinies.

On that distant day, long enclosed in the folds of time — that the gods have decreed to be the start of our tale — the talk began with the subject of the pyramid that Khufu wanted to make his eternal abode, the resting place for his flesh and bones. Mirabu, the ingenious architect who had heaped the greatest honors on Egypt through his dazzling artistry, was explaining this stupendous project to his lord the king. He expounded at length on the vast dimensions desired for this timeless enterprise, whose planning and construction he oversaw. Listening for a while to his friend, Pharaoh remembered that ten years had passed since the start of this undertaking. Not hiding his irritation, he reminded the revered craftsman, “Aye, dear Mirabu, I do believe in your immense ingenuity. Yet how long will you keep me waiting? You never tire of telling me of this pyramid's awe-someness. Still, we have yet to see one layer of it actually built — though an entire decade has passed since I marshaled great masses of strong men to assist you, assembling for your benefit the finest technical resources of my great people. And for all of that, I have not seen a single trace on the face of the earth of the pyramid you promised me. To me it seems these mastaba tombs in which their owners still lie — and which cost them not a hundredth of what we have spent so far — are mocking the great effort we have expended, ridiculing as mere child's play our colossal project.”