After Mahfuz's death, this unpublished manuscript was found. There are eighteen stories on a theme already treated by the author with great success, the neighborhood and the inhabitants of the city where everyone knows each other. In these stories, maids, beggars, bakers, midwives, the imam of the mosque, the head of the neighborhood: some of these characters know secrets of their neighbors...
These are stories with a message in which secrets that some would like to hide come to light. Mahfuz shows himself here as a master of realism, he tells the daily life of his characters, mixed with extraordinary events typical of magical realism. The characters reveal to the reader just how unreasonable life can be at times. He reflects on the reactions, strengths and weaknesses of human nature. Mahfuz immerses his readers in a world of folk tales, moral allegories and strange occurrences.
The book also contains the speech he made upon receiving the Nobel Prize in which, in addition to recalling his Egyptian and Muslim roots, he proposes Western aid to Muslim countries.
Naguib Mahfuz (1911-2006) was an Egyptian writer, columnist and playwright. In 1988 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. This would bring him worldwide fame and made him the first Arabic prose writer to receive this award. He published thirty-four novels and more than three hundred and fifty short stories.