"Naguib Mahfouz, an Egyptian novelist who was the first Arabic writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature and who was often considered the greatest writer in the Arab world... lived his entire life in Cairo, which provided the inspiration and backdrop for almost all of his writing... He set most of his works in the ancient Islamic quarter of Cairo, with its mosques and serpentine alleys teeming with shopkeepers, metalsmiths, government workers, peasants, prostitutes and thieves. His vibrant novels portraying life at every level of society were often likened to those of such other writers of urban social realism as Charles Dickens, Honore de Balzac and Emile Zola."

“According to Islamic principles, when a man is accused of heresy, he is given the choice between repentance and punishment.”

“rare privilege of entering a national psychology, in a way that thousands of journalistic articles or television documentaries could not achieve.”

“Voices were blended and intermingled in a tumultuous swirl around which eddied laughter, shouts, the squeaking of doors and windows, piano and accordion music, rollicking handclaps, a policeman's bark, braying, grunts, coughs of hashish addicts and screams of drunkards, anonymous calls for help, raps of a stick, and singing by individuals and groups.”

“Naguib Mahfouz on aucpress.com”

“It was amazing that in this country where people allowed emotion to guide their politics they approached love with the precision of accountants.”

“God did not intend religion to be an exercise club.”