Title: Children of Gebelawi

Author: Naguib Mahfouz (Egyptian)

Translator: Li Chen

Publisher: Sino-Culture Press

Edition: 1st Edition, October 2017

Format: 16 - mo, Soft Hardcover

Printed Sheets: 25.5

Word Count: 260,000 words

ISBN: 9787507547122

Price: 58.00 CNY

Children of Gebelawi is widely regarded as a great modern allegorical novel of the 20th century.

The novel panoramically and epically portrays the salvation stories of the block's pioneer, the old grandfather Gebelawi, and his descendants through generations.

Gebelawi, a mysterious figure, after building the block, led a reclusive life, cut off from the world. However, he held worldly power and distant truths.

Gebelawi promised all his descendants the right to inheritance and a good life. The descendants regarded obtaining the inheritance as the only way to achieve happiness. Thus, the inheritance became the focus of generations of strife. Oppression, plunder, and the subsequent resistance and struggles were repeated among generations of descendants...

Children of Gebelawi reflects the evolution of human society from the age of prophets to the age of science. It deeply explores issues such as history, destiny, power, and truth. It integrates realism, symbolism, absurdity, and mystery.

Naguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian writer and one of the most important intellectuals in the Arab world. At the age of 4, he was sent to a private school to study the Quran and received religious enlightenment education. In 1988, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Arabic - language writer to receive this honor. The reason for the award was "through his numerous finely wrought compositions, of which realism, with an incorruptible scrutiny, has inspired a new art of narration within the Arabic language, which has thereby been brought to the attention of the world." The first three historical novels he published, The Mockery of Fate, Rhadopis (also translated as The Courtesan and the Pharaoh), and The Battle of Aybak, all expressed patriotism. From the 1940s to the 1950s, Mahfouz was in the stage of realistic creation, and he published four novels that exposed social darkness and called for social change: New Cairo, Khan el - Khalili, Midaq Alley, and The Beginning and the End. The trilogy that marked the peak of his novel creation - Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street - is widely recognized as a milestone in the history of Arabic novels. Later, he also published works such as The Thief and the Dogs, The Search, The Beggar, Conversations on the Nile, and The Harafish.

Li Chen is an associate researcher of Arabic literature at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She graduated from the Arabic high - level translation class of the China Foreign Affairs University in 1962. In 1977, she transferred to the Oriental Section of the Institute of Foreign Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Her main works include Modern Arabic Literature and Mysticism. Her translations include Children of Gebelawi, The Call of the Setting Sun, and This is My Domain. She has also edited works such as Selected Classical Arabic Essays, Arabic Women's Literature, and Babylonian Myths.