The Days

<p><b>Taha Hussein''s classic autobiographical novel <i>The Days</i> helped usher in the era of modern Arabic writing and remains one of the most influential and best-known works of Arabic literature</b><br><br><b>"It is difficult to overstate Taha Hussein''s contribution to the intellectual renaissance in Egypt during the 20th century."—</b><i><b>The Guardian</b></i><br><br>The monumental three-part autobiography of one of modern Egypt''s greatest writers and thinkers is again available in a single paperback in this classic reissue. The first part,<i> An Egyptian Childhood</i> (1929), is full of the sounds and smells of rural Egypt. It tells of Hussein''s childhood and early education in a small village in Upper Egypt, as he learns not only to come to terms with his blindness but to excel in spite of it and win a place at the prestigious Azhar University in Cairo. The second part, <i>The Stream of Days: A Student at the Azhar</i> (1939), is an enthralling picture of student life in Egypt in the early 1900s, and the record of the growth of an unusually gifted personality. More than forty years later, Hussein published <i>A Passage to France </i>(1973), carrying the story on to his final attainment of a doctorate at the Sorbonne, a saga of perseverance in the face of daunting odds.</p>