Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Naguib Mahfouz's trilogy focuses on the Al Jawad family, a middle class shopkeeper and merchant. This first volume is set in and around the year 1918, just as WW1 is ending. It provides an excellent picture of traditional Muslim life, with its division of rights between men and women. One of the crisis points in the novel occurs when the wife dares to go out of the house without her husband's permission; another when a son joins the riots and demonstrations against the British without parental knowledge or permmission. Central to the story is the collision between male and female, between old and new, and the impact this has on the hierarchy of the family. An absorbing read, that helps us understand traditional Muslim attitudes to family and friends.