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The Governmental System Of The Prophet Muhammad

A 14-year-old girl (Eréndira) is living with her grandmother when she accidentally sets fire to their home. The grandmother forces Eréndira to repay the debt by becoming a prostitute as they travel a road as vagrants. Men line up to enjoy Eréndira's services and eventually after several years, Ulises, one of her clients, falls in love with her. She returns his affection and eventually he becomes willing to help her to freedom; he formulates a plan to escape with her and live off a fortune from oranges which contain diamonds smuggled by his Dutch father. The only obstacle lies in her grandmother....

A psychological study of the first order with a subtly Freudian flavor, THE MIRAGE is the autobiographical account of Kamil Ru'ba, a tortured soul who finds himself struggling unduly to cope with life's challenges. The internal torment and angst that dog him throughout his life and the tragic, ironic turns of events that overtake him as a young man are, to a great extent, the outworkings of his faulty upbringing. At the same time, they work together to drive home the novel's underlying theme: the illusory, undependable nature of the world in which we live and the call to seek, beyond the outward and the ephemeral, that which is inward and enduring. The narrative, full of pathos, draws the reader unwittingly into a vicarious experience of Kamil's agonies and ecstasies. As such, it is a specimen of Mahfouz's prose at its finest.