Synopses & Reviews
Naguib Mahfouz, famed for his uncanny power to depict the real world, is equally ingenious at capturing the surreal, the otherworldly, and the supernatural. The ghostly side of Mahfouz's fiction, though less well known than his other works, nonetheless remains a haunting presence. This collection of stories sifted from his later writings brings these restless spirits out of the Mahfouzian shadows together for the first time in English: A murdered man finds himself in the first level of what he mistakes for Paradise - where he faces, along with historical figures such as Akhenaten, Woodrow Wilson, and Gamal Abd al-Nasser, a strange system of earthly probation that may (or may not) get him to the fabled Seventh Heaven. A teenager is warned not to go near the allegedly haunted wood in his neighborhood, only to be drawn into the secret, enchanted life he finds within it. An honest perfume seller is accosted on a night out by angry skeletons, who threaten to march upon his alley as an avenging army if the sinners there do not change their ways. Satan speaks to us directly - to confess that there is still, despite the flood of evil in our times, an honorable man in the land. These and the other startling stories in The Seventh Heaven make a vivid contribution to the translated works of Egypt's - and the Arab world's - greatest modern author.
Synopsis
A haunting anthology of short fiction that draws on the Egyptian fascination with death and the afterlife explores the world of the supernatural as it follows the ghosts of such historical figures as Akhenaten, Woodrow Wilson, and Gamal Abd al-Nasser, who endure a strange kind of earthly probation in the hopes of gaining entry to the Seventh Heaven. Original.
Synopsis
Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz draws on his homeland’s rich engagement with the afterlife–and his own near-death experience at the hands of a would-be assassin–in these newly translated, brilliantly mysterious stories of the supernatural.
Among those who haunt these tales are the ghosts of Akhenaten, Woodrow Wilson, and Gamal Abd al-Nasser, who endure a strange system of earthly probation in the hope of gaining entry to the fabled Seventh Heaven; a teenager drawn into the secret, enchanted life he finds within his neighborhood’s forbidden wood; an honest perfume seller accosted on a night out by angry skeletons; and Satan himself, who confesses that there is still, despite the flood of evil in our times, an honorable man in the land. As ingenious at capturing the surreal as he is at documenting the very real social landscape of modern Cairo, Mahfouz guides these restless spirits as they migrate from the shadowy realms of other worlds to the haunted precincts of our own.
Translated by Raymond Stock
About the Author
Naguib Mahfouz is the most prominent author of Arabic fiction today. He was born in 1911 in Cairo and began writing at the age of seventeen. His first novel was published in 1939. Since then he has written nearly forty novel-length works and hundreds of short stories. In 1988 Mr. Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in 2006.
Raymond Stock (translator) is writing a biography of Naguib Mahfouz. He is the translator of Mahfouzs Voices from the Other World, Khufus Wisdom, and The Dreams.
Table of Contents
Translators IntroductionThe Seventh Heaven
The Disturbing Occurrences
Room No. 12
The Garden Passage
Forgetfulness
Beyond the Clouds
The Haunted Woods
The Vapor of Darkness
A Man of Awesome Power
The Only Man
The Rose Garden
The Reception Hall
A Warning from Afar
Arabic Text Sources