Publisher's Synopsis
This volume stitches together a fascinating and vivid account of the dramatic events of Sadat's era, from his break with the Soviet Union to the Yom Kippur War with Israel and eventual peace accord and up to his assassination by Islamic extremists in 1981. Through this tumultuous history, Mahfouz takes on a diverse array of political topics-including socioeconomic stratification, democracy and dictatorship, and Islam and extremism-which are still of crucial relevance to Egypt today. Clear-eyed and direct, the works illuminate Mahfouz's personal and political convictions that were more often hidden in his novels, enriching his better-known corpus with social, political, and ideological context.
These writings are a rare treasure, a story of a time of tremendous social and political change in the Middle East told by one if its most iconic authors.