Naguib Mahfouz, the first and only writer of Arabic to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature, wrote prolifically from the 1930s until shortly before his death in 2006, in a variety of genres: novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, a regular weekly newspaper column, and in later life his intensely brief and evocative Dreams. His Cairo Trilogy achieved the status of a world classic, and the Swedish Academy of Letters in awarding him the 1988 Nobel prize for literature noted that Mahfouz "e;through works rich in nuance-now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous-has formed an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind."e;Here Denys Johnson-Davies, described by Edward Said as "e;the leading Arabic-English translator of our time,"e; makes an essential selection of short stories and extracts from novels and other writings, to present a cross-section through time of the very best of the work of Egypt's Nobel literature laureate.