(2015) One of Mahfouz’s best loved works, a tale of obsessional revenge, now in paperback A thriller in form, a political and ethical analysis in substance. A professional thief and would-be killer, Said is an Egyptian Robin Hood whose thefts are motivated by powerful egalitarian principles, as well as by bitterness. His burning desire for revenge against those who betrayed him to the police carries him to the heights and depths of Cairo society during the early years of the 1952 Revolution.