Naguib Mahfouz became the first Arab writer to win international recognition when he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1988. This recognition did not come all of a sudden; Western readers conversant in Arabic have long been familiar with the work of Arab authors (including Mahfouz) whose appeal extends beyond their national borders to reach the timeless core of human experience. Attempts to cross the language barrier in English go back to at least the 1930s and 1940s of this century, when works of fiction by such notable Egyptian authors as Taha Husayn and Tawfiq al-Hakim were translated (namely, An Egyptian Childhood and The Maze of Justice, respectively).

The first translation of a novel by Naguib Mahfouz (Midaq Alley) did not appear however until 1966, when he was already recognised as the leading novelist in Arabic. It was not until the 1970s when Arab affairs came to the fore of the international arena and Arab studies flourished in Western academic circles that the translations from Arabic gathered real momentum. Thus when Mahfouz became Nobel laureate there had already been 10 titles by him in English translation alone. In the short period since the prize three more titles have been added and more are known to be in the offing. Not a bad record at all. The greatest achievement for Mahfouz may eventually prove to be that he has made the breakthrough for Arabic letters to the ordinary Western reader. Before the prize his translations were published by small academic publishers and aimed mainly at students of Arabic and perhaps also those Western brave souls with an interest in exotic Third World cultures. Today he is published by Doubleday on both sides of the Atlantic and the day may not be far ahead when a lay reader with an Arabic novel in translation in his hand may be spotted on the London underground.

Palace Walk (Bayn al-Qasrayn in the original) is the first part of what came to be known since its first publication in Arabic in 1956–57 as “The Trilogy.” At that time Mahfouz had been writing novels for some 15 years without attracting the attention he merited. Since “The Trilogy” he has come to be regarded as one of the greatest writers in Arabic. Of over 30 novels. “The Trilogy” is to date regarded as his magnum opus and it is widely believed that the relatively recent availability of Bayn al-Qasrayn in French was instrumental in swaying the mind of the Swedish Academy.

The novel is written in the tradition of social realists and as such is on a par with the great European masters of the 19th century. It represents the culmination of one stage of Mahfouz's development; he started his novelist's career by writing historical romances. (Since “The Trilogy” he has been writing novels more akin in their style and spirit to the modernists. More recently still he has grown more adventurous with form, trying to draw inspiration from traditional Arabic narrative moulds rather than the European model he has hitherto relied on.)

“The Trilogy” is set in old Cairo during the period between the two world wars. It traces the life of three generations of a lower-middle-class Cairene family at an important moment in their nation's life. While characters are individually portrayed and their private agonies and pleasures brought to life before us, the sociopolitical panorama of Egypt under the British occupation is equally vividly portrayed—no other novel has documented this period of the country's history. The novel is also invaluable for its perspective (especially in the second part) on the agony of the author's generation oscillating between the mediaeval religious values of their society and those of the modern, scientific and godless world they have come to know about through their contact with European thought.

TRANSLATION PROBLEMS

It is a great novel by any criterion. Not so unfortunately the present translation fails to capture the spirit of the Arabic text and does little justice to Mahfouz's style. What constitutes modern and spirited prose in Arabic has been rendered in a largely dated and stilted English register particularly so in the dialogue. Examples can be found on literally every page, but one will do here. Here is what Khadija says to her brothers trying to impress on them the importance of approaching her fearful father with regard to the subject of allowing their banished mother to return to her home: ‘If we're all content to keep silent and wait, days and weeks may go by while she's separated from her home and consumed by grief. Yes, talking to Papa is an arduous task, but it's no more oppressive than keeping quiet …’ (p. 212). This is not the idiom in which a girl who is hardly literate will speak; in fact, it is hardly the idiom in which anybody would speak. It is, however, the idiom which the translators use uniformly for every character and every situation. Part of their problem, of course lies, in a peculiarity of Arabic, namely the gap between the spoken and written versions. Mahfouz uses Fusha (standard literary Arabic) for his dialogue, which when translated literally would perhaps, in fairness to the translators, sound something like what we have just seen. But then the Arab reader is used to this, and habit redresses the gap on contact with the printed page. Moreover, Mahfouz has more and more consciously tried to bridge the gap between the two registers in his style by adopting structures and vocabulary common to both, with the result that there is nothing artificial about Mahfuzian dialogue.

Another major problem which faced the translators, and defeated them entirely is that of the high religious content of everyday spoken Arabic—something without parallel in modern secularised English. Generations of Western translators of Arabic texts have failed to deal satisfactorily with this obstacle, the present ones being no exception. Their failure stems from their inability to realise that God's apparent omnipresence in the Arabic tongue is of a purely linguistic (and therefore idiomatic) nature. They tend to regard it as an expression of a universal and deep-rooted sense of religiosity and as such a part of the cultural flavour of the text translated that ought to be preserved, partly because of their exaggerated sense of the ‘otherness’ of the Arab culture and partly because of the inadequate command which most Western Arabists have of colloquial Arabic. For the hapless reader the text becomes at best cumbersome and at worst totally incomprehensible. For example, Al-Sayyid Ahmad goes unannounced to visit a singer whose sexual favours he is after. She is taken aback to see him in her reception room: ‘The moment the woman's eyes fell on him she stopped in astonishment and shouted. “In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful! You!”’ (p. 92).

There is no intrinsic value in the letter of the expression used by the woman and rendered literally by the translators. It is purely idiomatic and should have been translated into some English idiom expression surprise. It will help to look at the issue in question by reversing the situation (like the English interjection of irritation, ‘Jesus!,’ purely a linguistic quantity without any religious connotations and therefore if translated into Arabic will have to be rendered idiomatically—although there is no choice in fact because Arabic does not happen to use the name of ‘Jesus’ to express irritation).

After two lines, it happens again: al-Sayyid Ahmad runs his eyes lustfully over the woman's body and says: ‘I the name of God. God's will be done.’ This again is the letter of the Arabic which in the context of the situation does not seem to mean anything. The Arabic words are in fact a colloquial exclamatory phrase expressing admiration.

There are also straightforward mistakes here and there that are probably attributable to misreading. One example is ‘When a generous man like you cheats, it isn't really cheating’ (p. 90) which does not mean much. The Arabic in fact says ‘A generous man like you can be cheated but will not himself cheat.’ On the same page when al-Sayyid Ahmad refuses to accept from his mistress payment for goods purchased at his shop, he humorously asks his assistant to write in the accounts book: ‘Goods destroyed by an act of God.’ Or so the translation would have us believe. The Arabic in fact says ‘Goods destroyed by exposure to love,’ which is obviously more pertinent to the context.

One is finally left with the feeling that the translation would have benefited a great deal and been spared many pitfalls if it had been thoroughly revised by a native speaker of Arabic with a good command of English. Delight at the appearance in translation of such a major work by Mahfouz is marred by the injury it has suffered. One awaits with trepidation the appearance of volumes two and three and can only hope that it is not already too late to avoid the failures of volume one.