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The Cairo Trilogy

byNaguib Mahfouz, Full Cast (Read by), Omar Sharif (Read by)

Complete Series

Omar Sharif leads an all-Egyptian cast in this three-part drama, recorded entirely in Egypt's capital.

Adapted from the novels of Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz, this gripping family saga chronicles the life of a downwardly-mobile middle class family as Egypt emerges from colonialism and adjusts to the modern world.

The Cairo Trilogy traces three generations of the family of tyrannical patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence. We are introduced to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons-the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. As his rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination, the world around them opens to the currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoil brought by the 1920s.

Throughout the trilogy, the family's trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years spanning the two World Wars, as change comes to a society that has resisted it for centuries.

Cast:
Old Kamal...........Omar Sharif
Young Kamal.......Karim Fouda
Kamal............Amr Waked
Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawab.....Ihab Sakkout
Amina..............Caroline Khalil
Fahmy..............Mena Reda
Yasin.....Tamer Nasrat
Miriam..............Ola Roshdy
Aida.....Shirine El Ansari
Zanuba...........Maryam El Khoshed
Zubayda..........Zeinab Moubarak
Ahmad.....Sedky Sakhar
Munim.....Ahmed Nour
Sawsan.....Dina Nadim
Badur.....Radwa Elgabry
Other cast members: Rena Malak, Yara Goubran, Nairy Avedissian, Ekram Zalat, Sherif Nour, Salah Fahmy, Yeve Youssef, Saymaa Shalan, Mika Thabet, Hany Seef, Hugh Sowden.

Dramatised by Ayeesha Menon
Directed by John Dryden
Music by Sacha Puttnam
A Goldhawk Production for BBC Radio 4

About Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz was the first Arab winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the most prominent literary figure in the Arab world of the Twentieth Century. Best known for his Cairo Trilogy (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Walk), which became an international bestseller, he was born in Cairo in 1911 and lived in the suburb of Agouza with his wife and two daughters for the rest of his life. He published more than thirty novels as well as many collections of short stories, plays and screenplays. In 1994, after he published a novel that led him into trouble with Egypt's religious authorities, an attempt was made on his life, but he died peacefully in 2006, aged 94.
Details
  • Imprint: BBC Digital Audio
  • ISBN: 9781405607254
  • Length: 171 minutes
  • Price: £6.00