Naguib Mahfouz, The Cairo Trilogy [Palace Walk; Palace of Desire; Sugar Street]

Alyn Hine (The Orient-Institut Beirut)

Ed. by Dalia Mostafa, University of Manchester
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 8.1.1: North African Writing and Culture: Arabic, Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanic.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Lia Brozgal (University of California, Los Angeles), Helen Rachel Cousins (Birmingham Newman University), Ziad Elmarsafy (King's College London), Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Dalia Mostafa (University of Manchester), Nora Parr (SOAS, University of London), Rita Sakr (Maynooth University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1956 - 1957

Places

Egypt (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Regarded by many critics as his masterpiece, Naguib Mahfouz’

The Cairo Trilogy

[

al-Thulathiyya

] chronicles the upheaval and change during the years 1917 to 1944 through the microscopic lens of a single family coming face to face with political events. Each of the three novels that comprise the trilogy was named after a street in Mahfouz’ home city:

Palace Walk

[

Bayn al-Qasrayn

Palace of Desire

[

Qasr al-Shawq

] and

Sugar Street

[

al-Sukkariyya

], their titles illustrative of the composition of the Jamaliyya quarter of Cairo where Mahfouz spent his childhood and where cramped, squalid blocks of flats neighboured spacious mansions. Although all three novels are centred on the al-Husayn quarter of Cairo and document the lives of the members of a middle-class mercantile Cairene family, they…

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3354 words

Citation: Hine, Alyn. "The Cairo Trilogy [Palace Walk; Palace of Desire; Sugar Street]". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 September 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35216, accessed 23 April 2024.]

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