SOURCE: A review of Fountain and Tomb, in World Literature Today, Vol. 63, No. 2, Spring, 1989, p. 361.

In the following mixed review, Allen discusses both the stories and the translation of Fountain and Tomb.

Published by an act of providence at almost the same moment as the announcement of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature, Fountain and Tomb is a translation of Hikayat haratina (1975). The title's literal meaning is “Tales of Our Quarter,” and the word quarter links the work with at least two others by Naguib Mahfouz (also frequently written Najib Mahfuz): the infamous novel Awlad haratina (“Children of Our Quarter”; 1959/1967; translated into English as Children of Gebelawi; see WLT 56:2, p. 398), and “‘Ushshaq al-hara” (“Lovers' Quarter”) from the short-story collection Hikaya bi-la bidaya wa-la nihaya (1971). As Shams al-din Musa shows in a recent article in Arabic for Afaq ‘Arabiyya (11, November 1988) on the “dimension of the quarter” in Mahfouz's fictional works...