Najib Mahfuz (born 1912) was Egypt's foremost novelist and the first Arab to win the Nobel Prize in literature. He had wide influence in the Arab world and was the author from that area best known to the West in the latter half of the 20th century. Najib...

Naguib Mahfouz is widely regarded as Egypt's finest writer. While his works remained largely unknown in English-speaking countries for most of the twentieth century, the author has nevertheless been viewed by many critics outside the Middle East as the e...

* MIDAQ ALLEY Naguib Mahfouz, translated by Trevor Le Gassick. Anchor, $8.50 ISBN 0-38526476-3 Dwelling in Cairo's impoverished Midaq Alley during WW II, a motley crew of characters springs to vibrant life in Egyptian Nobel laureate Mahfouz's (the Cairo Trilogy) artfully rendered...

KEVIN BAKER. HarperCollins, $26.95 (688p) ISBN 0-06-019582-7 * In his second New York novel (after Dreamland), Baker takes a grisly event--the 1863 Civil War draft riots--and crafts a terrifying, human story bursting with all the calamity, brutality and power of the riots themselves,...