FROM THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR – WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HISHAM MATAR

After an assassination attempt and in waning health, Naguib Mahfouz became more cautious in his twilight years. At the same time, in nightly dreams, his imagination began to roam his beloved city, Cairo, with a rare freedom.

In this collection of vivid vignettes linked together by the author’s precisely rendered nocturnal wanderings through Cairo, figures from Mahfouz’s personal life blend with his anxieties about Egypt’s political past and future.

Each dream is layered with philosophical and spiritual musings, hopes and disappointments. Over the course of the book, they build to a rich and complex picture of Mahfouz’s subconscious.

A master of both detailed realism and fabulous storytelling’ GUARDIAN

"The Arab world's foremost novelist" - New York Times

"Mahfouz's work is freshly nuanced and hauntingly lyrical" - Los Angeles Times

"A towering literary figure" - Economist

"A master of both detailed realism and fabulous storytelling" - Guardian

"Mahfouz is a storyteller of the first order in any idiom" - Vanity Fair

"Mahfouz's work is freshly nuanced and hauntingly lyrical. The Nobel Prize acknowledges the universal significance of his fiction" - Los Angeles Times Book Review

"The incredible variety of Naguib Mahfouz''s writings continues to dazzle our eyes" - Washington Post