MAHFOUZ, Naguib ~ The Cairo Trilogy [Palace Walk, Palace of Desire & Sugar Street].

FIRST PRINTINGS. The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo: 1989-1992.

Large 8vos., 3 vols; cloth-backed boards, each lettered in gilt to spine with coloured endpapers; together in the matching pictorial dustwrappers featuring sepia photographs by Culver Pictures and designed by Carin Goldberg; THE BOOKS near-fine to fine copies all, clean and bright with the occasional bruise or small mark; in the near-fine to fine DUSTRAPPERS, the final volume with price sticker to the lower panel. The wrappers are protected in removable Brodart archival covers. First English language editions, preceding the US Doubleday editions. With 'BG' to copyright page of Vol I, as called for. The complete Cairo trilogy by the Nobel Prize-Winning author Naguib Mahfouz. Mahfouz was born in Old Cairo in 1911, the youngest of seven children, and spent much of his early life in and around the city. In 1919 he witnessed British soldiers firing on demonstrators as part of the Egyptian revolution, and later referred to it as "the one thing which most shook the security of my childhood". In 1924 the family moved to Abbaseya, which was at the time a new Cairo suburb, and his mother took him to many cultural sites in and around the capital throughout his early life, including museums and ancient monuments. It was these experiences which bled into his later writings, many of them being set in these very locations. After studying Philosophy at the Egyptian University, Mahfouz devoted his career to his writing. 'The Cairo Trilogy' has become known as one of his most important and enduring outputs, and won Egypt's State Prize for Literature in 1957. The three titles are taken directly from streets in the city: 'Palace Walk' (Bayn al-Qasrayn) in the Gamaliya district, 'Palace of Desire' (Qasr al-Shawq) where the eldest son and his family live, and 'Sugar Street' (Al-Sukkariyya) where his daughter and her family live. The books follow the lives of the tyrannical el-Sayyed Ahmed Abdel Gawad and his family over a period of years between the first and second World Wars, up to the foundation of an Egyptian Republic in the 1950s. Encompassing three generations, the development of both the city and the family within it is explored, through the Egyptian Revolution, two wars, and changes in society which include among them attitudes towards women and social progress in the wake of great change. Strongly influenced by his own Philosophical education, the books draw attention to the complexities of life in which "The duty common to all human beings is perpetual revolution, and that is nothing other than an unceasing effort to further the will of life represented by its progress toward the ideal." Over a career which spanned 70 years, Mahfouz penned some 34 novels, 350 short stories, five plays and over a dozen screenplays. His books are characterised by a direct confrontation of taboo subjects such as socialism, homosexuality and God, many of which had remained previously unexplored within Egyptian Literature. He was unflinching in his own controversial views, which led to his books being banned in many Arab countries until the late 1980s. In 1988 he became the Arab world's first Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, and claimed, upon receiving the award, that "I believe that international doors have opened, and that from now on, literate people will consider Arab literature also. We deserve that recognition." In 1989 he joined a group of 80 intellectuals who spoke out against the fatwa in which Ayatollah Khomeini had called for Rushdie and his publishers to be killed for their work on, and involvement with 'The Satanic Verses'. "no blasphemy harms Islam and Muslims so much" they declared, "as the call for murdering a writer." In 1994, at the age of 82, he was subsequently attacked, surviving with life-changing injuries which hampered his ability to write. He spent the rest of his life under bodyguard protection. Very scarce complete and in such collectible condition.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Near Fine