Reception
It was originally published in Arabic in 1959, in serialised form, in the Cairo daily Al-Ahram. It was met with severe opposition from religious authorities, and publication in the form of a book was banned in Egypt.
It was first printed in Lebanon in 1967. An English translation by Philip Stewart was published in 1981 and is still in print; when Stewart refused to sell his copyright, Doubleday commissioned a new version by Peter Theroux.
It was this book that earned Naguib Mahfouz condemnation from Omar Abdul-Rahman in 1989, after the Nobel Prize had revived interest in it. As a result, in 1994 – a day after the anniversary of the prize – Mahfouz was attacked and stabbed in the neck by two extremists outside his Cairo home. Fortunately, Mahfouz survived the accident, yet he suffered from its consequences till his last day.
Read more about this topic: Children Of Gebelawi
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)