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The Seventh Heaven: Stories of the Supernatural

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Naguib Mahfouz, famed for his uncanny power to depict the real world, is equally ingenious at capturing the surreal, the otherworldly, and the supernatural. The ghostly side of Mahfouz’s fiction, though less well known than his other works, nonetheless remains a haunting presence. This collection of stories sifted from his later writings brings these restless spirits out of the Mahfouzian shadows together for the first time in A murdered man finds himself in the first level of what he mistakes for Paradise - where he faces, along with historical figures such as Akhenaten, Woodrow Wilson, and Gamal Abd al-Nasser, a strange system of earthly probation that may (or may not) get him to the fabled Seventh Heaven. A teenager is warned not to go near the allegedly haunted wood in his neighborhood, only to be drawn into the secret, enchanted life he finds within it. An honest perfume seller is accosted on a night out by angry skeletons, who threaten to march upon his alley as an avenging army if the sinners there do not change their ways. Satan speaks to us directly - to confess that there is still, despite the flood of evil in our times, an honorable man in the land. These and the other startling stories in The Seventh Heaven make a vivid contribution to the translated works of Egypt’s - and the Arab world’s - greatest modern author.

151 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,2005

This edition

Format
151 pages, Hardcover
Published
January 23, 2006 by Amer Univ in Cairo Pr
ISBN
9789774249402
ASIN
9774249402
Language
English

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About the author

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naguib mahfouz

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Naguib Mahfouz (Arabic author profile: نجيب محفوظ) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 22 votes)
5 stars
9(41%)
4 stars
7(32%)
3 stars
6(27%)
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22 reviews All reviews
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KiroTheAssassin
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I really enjoyed many of these stories. My favorite by far is "Beyond the Clouds," followed by "The Seventh Heaven" itself. However, there were a few I didn't care for at all. This may be a result of my own lapses of understanding, but there were about three or four that didn't speak to me at all.
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Vision2344
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Rather dissapointing. Some of the stories are repetitive, and others seem to have a decent-enough premise for a middling Twilight Zone episode, but are tossed off without much development and they're all a little obvious and moralistic. The only one which really stood out for me was the one about a lady who checks into a hotel room and starts having more guests over than could imaginably fit in, I forget the title. That was refreshingly bizzare, with a very effective transition from apparent normalcy to grotesque disorder.
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King_Of_Heaven
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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my very first taste of the author. some of the tales left me stupefied. tak tercapai akalku. 'the seventh heaven' is the longest, and i liked it the most.
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Azeuka
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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افضل قصة قرأتها في حياتي!
ما اعظمك يا محفوظ
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Bronos23
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I had originally thought of giving two stars to this collection of short stories, but after further reflection realized that because of their sheer pointlessness and lack of imagination they had earned a single star. Even the headline short story, "They Seventh Heaven," which makes an attempt at a plot and some sort of meaning, is ultimately uninteresting. The author is not telling me something profound by putting the souls of historical figures into the bodies of common people and a feeble attempt at enigmaticness at its end simply comes off as shallow. And that would have been the high point of all of these stories.
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Luigi_AU
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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A short taste of short stories from Mahfouz from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I'm struck by The Haunted Woods, A Man of Awesome Power, and mostly Room No. 12, which I really want to discuss with someone. The jacket says supernatural stories and there are plenty of skeletons and ghosts and angels and spiritual guides to heaven. I find plenty of class, religion, and politics as well. These are fable/parables that are more accessible, political Borges stories to me.
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cursednosy
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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قصة فريدة ورائعة جدد نجيب فيها ثوبه تألق وألفها بتسلطن مذهل.. اسعدتني جدا وبهرتني ...
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