The General Authority for Cultural Palaces (GASP) published a book about Egyptian Nobel laureate, Naguib Mahfouz, on the lauded author’s centenary celebrations.

Critic Sherif Saleh analysed the theory that humans realise themselves as part of a major, eternal story through Naguib Mahfouz’s novel, The Thief and The Dogs.

Saleh’s book, as a study, is the first of its kind. It investigates the text of The Thief and the Dogs, which was inspired by a murderer in the sixties in Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria. The murders, published in the newspapers, affected Mahfouz. When Mahfouz’s novel was published it was adopted into a movie and then a series. 

The analysis Saleh delves into parts from the idea that there is no existence for a human outside a story, when writing, roughly translated: Transforming a Story: Naguib Mahfouz's The Thief and The Dogs. The study shows how the story of the murder is realised in its different visual, audio and written manifestations.