"I am the son of two civilizations that at a certain age in history have formed a happy marriage. The first of these, seven thousand years old, is the Pharaonic civilization; the second, one thousand four hundred years old, is the Islamic civilization." - Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel Lecture. Mahfouz is the most important Arab writer in modern Arabic literature with tens of novels and short stories, most of them deal with the political and social life in Egypt.