The Nobel Prize-winning writer's masterwork is the engrossing story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Britain's occupation of Egypt in the early decades of the twentieth century.The novels of The Cairo Trilogy trace three generations of the family of tyrannical patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence. Palace Walk introduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons–the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. Al-Sayyid Ahmad’s rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination in Palace of Desire, as the world around them opens to the currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoil brought by the 1920s. Sugar Street brings Mahfouz’s vivid tapestry of an evolving Egypt to a dramatic climax as the aging patriarch sees one grandson become a Communist, one a Muslim fundamentalist, and one the lover of a powerful politician.Throughout the trilogy, the family's trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years spanning the two World Wars, as change comes to a society that has resisted it for centuries. Filled with compelling drama, earthy humor, and remarkable insight, The Cairo Trilogy is the achievement of a master storyteller.

    The latest, third, edition, appeared in 1957 and is now in its tenth reprinting. After each new element of grammar the learner is given a set of exercises, and the book also contains useful resources such as a list of hieroglyphic signs and information about the development of the language.

    Eventually, with his third wife, he moved to southern France, where he lived for over thirty years.His poetry, his island books and his novels reflect his passion for congenial places and people, preferably around the shores of the Mediterranean. As Ian MacNiven shows in this major biography, Durrell's private world was assimilated into his writing from the very beginning, and it has taken years of patient research to piece together the true narrative of his literary background and influences.The book was undertaken at Durrell's invitation, with access to his personal papers and notebooks and letters. It draws heavily on the memories of innumerable friends and contemporaries, as well as his own family and the many women in his life, including his wives. It will engross all admirers of this mercurial and richly gifted writer whose 'investigation of modern love' in The Alexandria Quartet produced one of the masterpieces of post-war fiction.