Layale Alf Liyla; (The Night of One Thousand Nights and One)
Cairo, Egypt: Maktbit Misr, 1985. First Edition. Signed: “Naguib Mahfouz”
Naguib Mahfouz, (1911 - 2006) has been the only Egyptian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1988). He spent most all of his life in Cairo, where he published his first novel in 1939 and ten more were written before the Egyptian Revolution of July 1952, when he stopped writing for several years. The appearance of the Cairo Triology, Bayn al Qasrayn, Qasr al Shawq, Sukkariya (Between-the-Palaces, Palace of Longing, Sugarhouse) in 1957 made him famous throughout the Arab world as a depictor of traditional urban life. Until 1972, Mahfouz was employed as a civil servant, first in the Ministry of Mortmain Endowments, then as Director of Censorship in the Bureau of Art, as Director of the Foundation for the Support of the Cinema, and, finally, as consultant on Cultural Affairs to the Ministry of Culture. The years following his retirement from the Egyptian bureaucracy saw an outburst of further creativity, much of it experimental. He was the author of no fewer than thirty novels, more than a hundred short stories, and more than two hundred articles. Half of his novels have been made into films which have circulated throughout the Arabic-speaking world. (Les Prix Nobel). Very good, light wear and spine crease on graphic card cover. Item #3352
"Literature should be more revolutionary than revolutions themselves; writers must find the means to continue to be critical of the negative elements in the sociopolitical reality." - Naguib Mahfouz.
Price: $450.00