Cairo Modern
An Arabic Novel

Mahgub Abd al-Da'im is a scamp who fancies himself a nihilist, a hedonist, an egotist, but his personal vulnerability is soon revealed by a family crisis back home in al-Qanatir, a provincial town on the Nile.

Mahgub Abd al-Da'im is a scamp who fancies himself a nihilist, a hedonist, an egotist, but his personal vulnerability is soon revealed by a family crisis back home in al-Qanatir, a provincial town on the Nile. This cautionary morality tale about self-defeating egoism and ill-digested foreign philosophies comes from the same period as one of the writer's best-known works, "Midaq Alley". Both novels are comic and heart-felt indictments of human nature and our paltry attempts to establish just societies.