Muzakarat Na’ib fi Al-Aryaf (Diary of a Country Prosecutor) by Tawfiq Al-Hakim, The Family Library, Cairo, 1995, pp 175 (first published 1937).

The diary's time span is just eleven days, opening on 11 October and ending on 22 October, which Al-Hakim recorded as a connected story. It started with his attempt to sleep, only to be called in a hurry to investigate a shooting incident in an unnamed village in Egypt's Delta.

Since he is a prosecutor, he has been fond of mentioning details as well as having a sharp eye. The diary was written in a compact and very condensed style.

Although the diary isn't a novel, it proceeds along two parallel lines that can be considered a main plot and a subplot. The gunshot incident constitutes the main plot of the book, and the victim, Qamar Al-Dawla Ilwan, has just uttered the name Reem in the hospital before going into a coma and eventually dying.

Afterwards, Al-Hakim learns that Reem, a strikingly beautiful young woman, was the victim's sister-in-law. To protect her, the sheriff decides to keep her in his house, but she escapes. Eventually, her corpse is found drowned in a canal. Al-Hakim and his assistant refuse to have an autopsy performed so as not to disfigure her gorgeous body, and they consider the case closed.

On the other hand, the subplot focuses on the way court cases are handled by judges and the interaction between judges and defendants. This subplot reveals a very dark side of the justice system, in which there is a lack of justice and one judge rushes to hand down sentences without giving ample time to read the case carefully or to hear the defendant or witnesses at all—all so that the judge can catch the train back to Cairo!

Through this subplot, Al-Hakim also sheds light on the unthinkable poverty, hunger, misery, and ignorance widespread among the peasants. At the same time, the mayor and the sheriff live in extreme abundance. One peasant is imprisoned for theft because he ate a corncob to satisfy his hunger; another is imprisoned because he and his family ate from the wheat harvest he had cultivated, even though it was tied to an outstanding debt he shouldn't have touched—though he wasn't aware of this law.

Al-Hakim suggests that the government should either issue laws that take into consideration the circumstances of people, especially in rural areas, or raise awareness among those people.

As for the village club, it was just a room where the sheriff would always beat the village government employees while playing cards for money. Consequently, he seizes their salaries and lends them money to cover their household expenses until they receive their new salary, and so on, month after month.

Throughout the book, Al-Hakim is humble and down-to-earth, and very considerate of the weaknesses of the human condition, but also keen not to tarnish his professional dignity in any way. He fills the diary with observations laced with bitter satire. He mentions the case of a Sudanese professional killer who revealed the crime he had committed when his client, a peasant, delayed paying the blood money.

Here, Al-Hakim begins to question why Egyptians resort to non-Egyptians to carry out killings. He suggests that perhaps Egyptians weren't accustomed to carrying weapons for centuries, or that peasants' hands, used to growing and cultivating the land, wouldn't be able to take the life of another.

The writer raises many questions about unjust conditions, such as the ignorance of midwives, which has caused thousands of infant deaths. The midwifery system was never changed, nor were the midwives adequately educated.

Al-Hakim also complains about the injustice in the transfer of public prosecutors across the country. The lucky prosecutors who have connections never serve in the countryside, while the unlucky ones are transferred to Lower and Upper Egypt.

A telling conversation occurs between the sheriff and the prosecutor (Al-Hakim) about organizing the legislative elections, which is the top priority for all the government officials there, with everything else, crime or otherwise, discarded. The sheriff asserts that he allows voters absolute freedom to choose whomever they want, then throws the ballot boxes into the canal and begins counting the results from ballot boxes he has prepared according to what the government has chosen to win! 

Al-Hakim believes the sheriff can be excused, for if he didn't do what the government (which he calls "the administration") ordered him to do, he would be punished severely, without any sign of mercy or pity.

Tawfiq Al-Hakim was an essayist, playwright, and novelist (1898–1987). He was one of the pioneers of stage writing, especially the Intellectual Theatre, and authored between eighty and one hundred plays. Many critics consider his novel The Return of the Spirit his most seminal work.