SOURCE: “The Vagaries of Love,” in Times Literary Supplement, March 15, 1991, p. 10.

In the following review, Hussein explores how Palace of Desire serves as a bridge between Mahfouz's earlier works and his later, more cynical prose.

The severed head of Islam's most honoured martyr, Imam Al-Hussein, the prophet Muhammad's grandson and a symbol of resistance to oppression for many Muslims, lies buried in a sepulchre in Cairo—or so tradition tells us. Kamal, the idealistic central figure of Palace of Desire, is an ardent devotee at the shrine, until an encounter with a more sceptical companion relieves him of his faith; the shrine, he is told, is merely an empty symbol.

The memory of this early loss of faith, seen as the prelude to all his life's ensuing tragedies, echoes throughout this magnificent account of Kamal's quest for truth in love, philosophy, art and politics, and it contains within...