Palace Walk - the first part of the Cairo Trilogy

Palace Walk is the first novel in Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz's magnificent Cairo Trilogy, an epic family saga of colonial Egypt that is considered his masterwork "A tale told with great affection, humor, and sensitivity, in a style that in this translation is always accessible and elegant."—The New York Times Book Review Palace Walk transports us into the life of a Cairo family during Egypt's occupation by British forces in the 1900s. The father, Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, is somber and tyrannical with his wife and children, but at night seeks pleasure in the aesthetic and erotic. His wife, Amina, is a willing prisoner in a society where it is forbidden for a virtuous woman to leave her house except in the company of her husband or adult sons. Aisha, their younger daughter, dares to peer through the mashrabeya from which the women view the world. And Fahmy, their second son, is caught up in the violence that threatens them all as Egypt struggles to become free.