SOURCE: “A Romance of the Masses,” in Times Literary Supplement, June 24, 1994, p. 25.

In the following mixed review, Davis argues that The Harafish's distinctly Middle Eastern qualities may make it difficult for Western readers to understand.

The Harafish is a translation of a novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, first published in Arabic in 1977. As the translator, Catherine Cobham, tells us in a prefatory note, “The meaning … of harafish is the rabble. … In the novel it means the common people in a positive sense, those in menial jobs, casual workers, and the unemployed and homeless.” In not translating the title, and so keeping it undomesticated by English, Ms. Cobham has wisely signalled to us the fact that the novel differs in many ways from what we might expect to find in a Western novel.

The book draws for its material on the ancient clan system...