“A fusion of realism and allegory in the history of life in a modern Egyptian alley – via Genesis, the New Testament, and the Qur’an. As with others who reimagine Scripture in new ways, Mahfouz was declared a heretic and attacked by fundamentalists. This places Mahfouz in a distinguished lineage, traced in my book, from the Gnostic heretics to Luther, Rabelais, Galileo, Spinoza, Darwin, and Dickinson.”