Naguib Mahfouz: Between the Short Story and the Epic Novel

In this book, Professor Ibrahim Fathi pauses to analyze, with remarkable depth, comprehensiveness, and thoroughness, important aspects of Naguib Mahfouz's creative output. Among these aspects are Mahfouz's short stories, short plays, or dialogues—or what Naguib Mahfouz preferred to call "dramatic texts." This book exhibits remarkable characteristics that have remained hallmarks of Professor Ibrahim Fathi's critical work: a keenness to capture the essence of the literary text; an exploration of the dimensions of a single idea or issue across the entirety of the writer's works; a connection between the literary work and the diverse contexts surrounding it in both local and universal culture; a celebration of the inherent, and sometimes dormant, aesthetic value within the depths of the text; and a reliance—in all of this—on a profound philosophical awareness, extensive experience and refined taste, and a critical spirit that is, in itself, a form of creative expression. (Dr. Hussein Hammouda)