The Dreams

[Naguib Mahfouz] is not only a Hugo and a Dickens, but also a Galsworthy, a Mann, a Zola, and a Jules Romains. -- The London Review of Books Mahfouz's work is freshly nuanced and hauntingly lyrical. The Nobel Prize acknowledges the universal significance of his fiction. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review Naguib Mahfouz virtually invented the novel as an Arab form. He excels at fusing deep emotion and soap opera. --The New York Times Book Review Naguib Mahfouz is the greatest writer in one of the most widely understood languages in the world, a storyteller of the first order in any idiom. -- Vanity Fair Throughout Mahfouz's fiction there is a pervasive sense of metaphor, of a literary artist who is using his fiction to speak directly and unequivocally to the condition of his country. His work is imbued with love for Egypt and its people, but is also utterly honest and unsentimental. -- The Washington Post �Naguib Mahfouz� is not only a Hugo and a Dickens, but also a Galsworthy, a Mann, a Zola, and a Jules Romains. -- The London Review of Books Cryptic, haunting, and brief. . . . Frequently the narrator begins in delight and wonder . . . and ends in terror, doubt, and confusion. -- The New Yorker Mahfouz [gives us] a sense of immersion in a mind at the edge of life, a mind returning to its elemental instincts. . . . Mahfouz maintains an unruffled, even humorous voice in the face of these volatile dreamscapes. . . . A fine, surreal filter through which to divine all the elements at play in contemporary Egyptian society. -- The Seattle Times Cryptic, haunting, and brief. . . . Frequently the narrator begins in delight and wonder . . . and ends in terror, doubt, and confusion. The New Yorker Mahfouz [gives us] a sense of immersion in a mind at the edge of life, a mind returning to its elemental instincts. . . . Mahfouz maintains an unruffled, even humorous voice in the face of these volatile dreamscapes. . . . A fine, surreal filter through which to divine all the elements at play in contemporary Egyptian society. The Seattle Times Cryptic, haunting, and brief. -- The New Yorker Mahfouz immerses us in a mind at the edge of life, a mind returning to its elemental instincts. Desire, paranoia, fear and nostalgia seize hold of the dreamer. -- The Seattle Times