ABSTRACT
In 1945 Mahfouz published Khan al-Khalili1 thereby marking a shift of interest from ancient history to contemporary social reality. Khan al-Khalili was to be the first of a series of novels dealing, in the best traditions of realism and naturalism, with contemporary Egyptian society before the 1952 revolution. Throughout this phase of his writing, which culminated in the publication of The Trilogy in 1956-7, Mahfouz appeared to have (Hamidst the immense diversity of character, situation and idea that are the hallmark of these works) one particular theme which ran through all of them, sometimes obviously, sometimes not so obviously, but always there. By this I mean the conflict between old and new, or past and present: in other words, the conflict between two value systems; one wallowing in the security of age-old tradition, and the other attracted to Western modernity with all its attendant perils. In all these novels Mahfouz appears highly sensitive to the tragic potential of such conflict to both individual and society and sets out to explore it with varying degrees of emphasis and from different angles. This I hope will become apparent in the course of the present chapter.
