The Thief and the Dogs

Naguib Mahfouz · 1911–2006 · Egypt

Originally Al-Liss wal-Kilab (Arabic) · translated by Trevor Le Gassick and M. M. Badawi

Why it matters

A thief walks out of prison into a Cairo that has already replaced him: his wife remarried to the informer who turned him in, his old comrades' ideals sold out for respectability. Mahfouz's shortest, most modern novel, an interior monologue driving one man's reckoning with everyone who betrayed him.

At a glance

Compressed, associative stream-of-consciousness narration tracks a mind unraveling toward violence.