Love, who can count its varieties, measure its force, remove the masks it wears, and predict how it binds or divides? In this novel, master storyteller Naguib Mahfouz gives us some of his most memorable characters, well-known to Egyptians from the film version of the book: Sitt Ain, with her large house, her garden, her cats, and her familiar umbrella, strong and active, mother of the neighborhood; her son Izzat, so different from her, emotional and unsure of his way; and the friends of his childhood, Sayyida, Hamdoun, and Badriya, all their lives entangled and shaped over many years by the encounter of commitment, ambition, treachery, and above all love. This is a story of twentieth-century Egypt. The motifs may be familiar, but they combine to tell a new and intriguing tale, with an unexpected outcome.

Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006). He wrote nearly 40 novel-length works, plus hundreds of short stories and numerous screenplays. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988.