SOURCE: “Ancient Tales, Modern Telling,” in Chicago Tribune Books, April 2, 1995, pp. 6–7.

In the following review of Arabian Nights and Days, Mesic offers a positive assessment of Mahfouz's adaptation of The Arabian Nights.

At the heart of Arabian Nights and Days, an enthralling novel by Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, is the spacious courtyard of the Cafe of the Emirs. Despite some concessions to the distinctions of wealth—the cafe is furnished with couches for affluent customers and low mats for humble laborers—it is a place of true democracy. For conversation, which flourishes here, rests on an assumption of equality. Thus Nural-Din, a perfume seller of wealth and surpassing good looks, and Shamloul, the hunch-backed millionaire, gather with Ma‘rouf the cobbler and Ugr the barber and hear the lowly porter Sindbad announce his decision to become a sailor and thus quench his longing for “the unknown...