Ahmad leaves a late-night debauch to be arrested and forced to help repair damage caused by terrorists. Kamal befriends the soldiers while Fahmy in particular grows to hate them. To quell nationalistic demonstrations, British garrisons are established, one across the street from the Abd al-Jawad home. The sisters are married to affluent brothers and move into the husband's home, which is less strict and tiring. He becomes involved in the dangerous revolutionary movement and conflicts with Ahmad, finally disobeying a direct order to cease and desist. Fahmy wants to marry the next door neighbor but is forbidden until he graduates. When Yasin attempts to rape the family servant, Umm Hanafi, he is married off to calm his passions, but the bride is too liberated for the marriage to succeed. Yasin stumbles upon his father's other side while visiting a call girl and is impressed that they are so much alike. The other family members gather towards dusk for 'coffee hour,' a cherished time of sharing. Ahmad comes home from his shop for lunch and a siesta, and then returns to work before going out on the town. Clever Kamal is still in grade school Daughters Khadija and Aisha, polar opposites in appearance and temperament, breakfast with Amina afterward and then do housework under Amina's strict eye. Fahmy is a serious and pious law student. Unbeknown to each other, Ahmad and Yasin enjoys the same debauchery. Sons Yasin, Fahmy, and Kamal eat breakfast with their father, and proudly follow him to work or school. A religious man, Ahmad depends on God's mercy. Outsiders see Ahmad as the life of any party, musical and generous. She alone knows of his other side: nightly rounds of drinking and sex. She prays constantly for her family's welfare. Pious wife Amina prides herself on being submissive and supportive. In 1994, after the publication of a novel that led him into trouble with Egypt's religious authorities, an attempt was made on his life, but he died peacefully in 2006, aged 94.The first volume in Mahfouz Naguib's Cairo Trilogy, Palace Walk examines middle-class life just after World War I, following the joys, sorrows, and sorrows of the Abd al-Ahmad family during the revolutionary years 1917-19.Īhmad Abd al-Jawad is a domestic tyrant, demanding instant and absolute obedience to a household standard that few Muslims follow. In 1988, Mr Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first Arab writer to win it.

He published more than thirty novels as well as many collections of short stories, plays and screenplays. He was born in Cairo in 1911 and lived in the suburb of Agouza with his wife and two daughters for the rest of his life. Biography: Naguib Mahfouz was most prominent literary figure in the Arab world of the Twentieth Century, best known for his Cairo Trilogy (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Walk), which became an international bestseller.

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