SOURCE: “Gloomy Clouds & Laughing Sun: Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel Laureate,” in Encounter, Vol. 75, No. 2, September, 1990, pp. 43–46.

In the following review, Enright considers the strengths and weaknesses of several recent translations of Mahfouz's novels.

I shall consider these novels by Naguib Mahfouz in the order not of their publication but of my reading of them, which, it seems to me, is also the ascending order of their interest. It needs to be emphasised that what is being discussed is the novels as they appear in English translation.

The thief of The Thief and the Dogs (1961) is Said Mahran, released after four years in prison, and determined to take revenge on those who (he believes) betrayed him, notably Ilish Sidra and Nabawiyya, his former wife, now married to Ilish. Nabawiyya prompts one of the overflowings of stream-of-consciousness which crop up throughout: “How I wish our eyes could meet, so I might...