In this provocative and dreamy parable, a young man disillusioned by the corruption of his homeland sets out on a quest to find Gebel, the land of perfection, from which no one has ever returned.
He died in August 2006..
In 1988, he was the first writer in Arabic to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Of his many works, most famous is The Cairo Trilogy, consisting of Palace Walk (1956), Palace of Desire (1957), and Sugar Street (1957), which focuses on a Cairo family through three generations, from 1917 until 1952.
His nearly forty novels and hundreds of short stories range from re-imaginings of ancient myths to subtle commentaries on contemporary Egyptian politics and culture.
About the Author: Naguib Mahfouz was born in Cairo in 1911 and began writing when he was seventeen.
Like the protagonists of A Pilgrim\'s Progress and Gulliver\'s Travels, Naguib Mahfouz\'s hero travels not through any recognizable historical landscape, but through timeless aspects of human possibility.
All of these places, however, are inevitably marred by the specter of war, and Ibn Fattouma finds himself continually driven onward, ever seeking.
On his way, Ibn Fattouma passes through a series of very different lands--realms where the moon is worshipped, where marriage does not exist, where kings are treated like gods, and where freedom, toleration, and justice are alternately held as the highest goods.
In this provocative and dreamy parable, a young man disillusioned by the corruption of his homeland sets out on a quest to find Gebel, the land of perfection, from which no one has ever returned
