Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy, Volume One).

New York, NY Doubleday: Anchor Books, 1991. Paperback First Edition Thus (1991), 25th Printing. Very Good in Wraps: shows moderate wear to the extremities; mild rubbing to the panels; the binding is slightly cocked off square; the expected light tanning to the text pages due to aging; the binding remains secure; the text is clean. Free of creases to the panels. Free of creases to the backstrip. Free of creased or dog-eared pages in the text. Free of underlining, hi-lighting, notations, or marginalia. Free of any ownership names, dates, addresses, notations, inscriptions, stamps, plates, or labels. A hcarefully-used copy, structurally sound and tightly bound, showing mild wear and minor cosmetic imperfections. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo. (9.25 x 6 x 1.2 inches). 498 pages. Translated by William Maynard Hutchins and Olive E Kenny. Language: English. Weight: 22.5 ounces. First Edition Thus (1991), 25th Printing. Trade Paperback. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. Book One of the Cairo Trilogy. Naguib Mahfouz's wonderful novel Palace Walk was originally published in Arabic in 1956, and not translated to English until 1990. This is the story of Al-Sayyid Ahmad, a shopkeeper in Cairo during and after World War I, his wife, Amina, and the lives and courtships of their several children. The novel offers profound insight into a different culture and religion. Al-Sayyid has a dual personality -- petty tyrant at home, with his wife and children; bon vivant and man-about-town with his friends. Because of the harsh sexual segregation in his traditional Arab home, his wife is none the wiser, but his older sons learn of first hand then come to emulate their father's lifestyle. Although the subject matter is "small" -- a middle-class family's domestic issues -- this is unquestionably a "big" book, raising issues of religion, class, gender, and integrity. Mahfouz is a truly gifted writer, and conveys his characters with humor, insight, clarity and compassion.