"[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
