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Chapters (47)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Acknowledgment
  6. Translator’s Introduction
  7. ONE
  8. TWO
  9. THREE
  10. FOUR
  11. FIVE
  12. SIX
  13. SEVEN
  14. EIGHT
  15. NINE
  16. TEN
  17. ELEVEN
  18. TWELVE
  19. THIRTEEN
  20. FOURTEEN
  21. FIFTEEN
  22. SIXTEEN
  23. SEVENTEEN
  24. EIGHTEEN
  25. NINETEEN
  26. TWENTY
  27. TWENTY-ONE
  28. TWENTY-TWO
  29. TWENTY-THREE
  30. TWENTY-FOUR
  31. TWENTY-FIVE
  32. TWENTY-SIX
  33. TWENTY-SEVEN
  34. TWENTY-EIGHT
  35. TWENTY-NINE
  36. THIRTY
  37. THIRTY-ONE
  38. THIRTY-TWO
  39. THIRTY-THREE
  40. THIRTY-FOUR
  41. THIRTY-FIVE
  42. THIRTY-SIX
  43. THIRTY-SEVEN
  44. THIRTY-EIGHT
  45. About the Author
  46. Other Titles
  47. What’s next onyour reading list?

To what effect, then, does Mahfouz swap linguistic registers, i.e. the exalted for the mundane? The answer is: irony. Mahfouz creates an intricate pattern of verbal irony which he weaves into the very texture of the novel and maintains throughout. This pattern of verbal irony engenders in the reader an awareness of the incongruity between the object and mode of expression, i.e. the realistic situation and the hyperbolic terms in which it is rendered. This awareness creates and sustains, all the way through, a sense of dramatic irony where the reader is, as it were, cognizant of a basic fact of which the protagonist is ignorant, namely that his obsession has misguided him, that there is nothing holy about his ambition, and that, in his quest for salvation, he has only fallen into a hell of his own making. It is in the creation and sustainment of this pattern of verbal irony and in the complete subjugation of the novelistic experience to a language order originally alien to it that Mahfouz has, in the opinion of the present writer, achieved a feat unprecedented not only in his own work but probably in Arabic fiction altogether.

NOTES

1. The other ten are:

Midaq Alley, Khayat, Beirut, 1966; corrected edition: Heinemann, London, 1975

Mirrors, Bibliotheca Islamica, Chicago, 1977

Miramar, Heinemann, 1978

Children of Gebelawi, Heinemann, 1981

Wedding Song, Doubleday/Anchor Books, 1989

The Thief and the Dogs, Doubleday/Anchor Books, 1989

The Beginning and the End, Doubleday/Anchor Books, 1989

Autumn Quail, Doubleday/Anchor Books, 1990

The Cairo Trilogy, Volume I, Palace Walk, Doubleday, 1990

The Beggar, Doubleday/Anchor Books, 1990

2. God’s World: An Anthology of Short Stories, Bibliotheca Islamica, Minneapolis, 1973

3. See his book on Mahfouz, al-Muntami (The Conformist), Cairo, 1969

4. For a discussion of this issue see the translator’s doctoral thesis, Hadrat al-Muhtaram by Naguib Mahfouz: a Translation and a Critical Assessment, University of Exeter, 1984, pp. 206–9

5. See Naguib Mahfouz, Atahaddath Ilaykum (I Speak to You), Beirut, 1977, p. 111.

6. Ibid., pp. 73–74.

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