Mirrors - Softcover

Mirrors consists of a series of vignettes of characters from a writer’s life. Through each vignette—whether of a lifelong friend, a sometime adversary, or a childhood sweetheart—not only is that one character described but light is thrown on other characters, as well as on the narrator himself, who we come to know through the mirrors of his world of acquaintances. Mirrors also reflects the recent history of Egypt, its political movements, its leaders, its wars, and its peace.

Naguib Mahfouz was born in 1911 in the Cairo district of Gamaliya. He wrote nearly 40 novel-length works, plus hundreds of short stories and numerous cinema plots and scenarios. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. He died in Cairo on August 30, 2006 at the age of 94. Seif Wanli was born in Alexandria in 1906. His prolific output is estimated at 3,000 oil paintings and more than 80,000 sketches; he also designed sets for theatre and opera productions. He died in in 1979. Roger Allen is professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania. He has translated Mahfouz's Autumn Quail and other works of Arabic literature.