Mahfouz,Naguib.

Arabian Nights and Days.

New York. Limited Editions Club. 2005. This Edition Limited to 300 numbered copies of which this is #43. Signed by Mahfouz and Madkour to the Colophon. Illustrated with seven, 30 inch square Serigraph/Giclee prints by Nazli Madkour. Prints editioned by George drexel and Robert Tursack. Folio. 15" x 16.25". Bound in full rough silk. Gilt-tooled morocco title label inset to front cover with Title in Arabic. Encased in a velvet lined Solander box with gilt-titled morocco label to spine bearing title in English.

Naguib Mahfouz, the first Arabic writer to be honored with the Nobel Prize, was born in 1911 in Cairo,the city that provides the background for most of his writings. His first collection of short stories appeared in 1938. All ýin All Mahfouz has published some forty novels, over 350 short stories and more than two hundred articles. Half of his novels have been made into films which have circulated throughout the Arabic speaking world.

The felicitous translation of Arabian Nights and Days was made by the Canadian-born Denys Johnson-Davies, who did his graduate work at Cambridge and Oxford Universities. He is considered today's leading Arabic- English translator, he lives in Cairo.

As does does illustrator, Nazli Madkour. Her mixed-media paintings, simultaneously naïve and sophisticated, are quintessentially Arabian in spirit and bring to mind the flying carpets of Arabian folklore. The artist has exhibited extensively in Egypt and abroad and her works have been acquired by Museums and private collectors. Madkour's 35x35cm paintings were transformed into fine-art prints as illustrations by George Drexel, considered by artists to be the supreme master of the complex technique involved known as Giclee, meaning sprayed. As Drexel describes it, Giclee is a process whereby the original painting is scanned or rendered digitally. Artists at his atelier work with the image on the computer screen to assure accuracy of detail and fidelity to the colors, achieving a far higher quality of reproduction that can be attained with any other process.

Michael and Winifred Bixler designed the typography at their printery in Skaneateles, a town in the Finger ýLakes area of New York State, where they set the type by hand and printed the text pages on imported hand- moulded paper. They selected the Bembo typeface which owes its beauty and legibility to its well-proportioned letter-forms and its clear, unfussy details. The Bixlers then collaborated with Mohamed Zakariya- a professional California-born calligrapher who has written two books on Islamic calligraphy- to produce what must be the most striking title page in the history of the Limited Editions Club. Truly a magnificent and towering achievement of modern book design.

Mohamed Salmawy - " In late 2005, I came back from America with something unusual. I brought back a book that was 15x15 inches and priced at $5,000. The book was Arabian Nights and Days, a novel by Naguib Mahfouz first published in Arabic in 1982. The new edition was produced by the New York-based Limited Editions Club, a publisher specialised in livres d'artiste, or artist books.

When Limited Editions Club wanted to publish a Naguib Mahfouz novel they asked the author to name a suitable book. I conveyed that request to Mahfouz and he gave the company a choice between The Harafish and Arabian Nights and Days. They chose the latter. The publishers then asked Mahfouz to name a top Egyptian artist to do the paintings and he selected Nazli Madkour. They asked me to write the foreword and I said I couldn't write a foreword for someone like Mahfouz. So I wrote an epilogue that went at the end of the book.

The book was launched at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Back in Cairo, I placed the book in front of Mahfouz. "Here is your new book," I said. "That's something," he replied, laughing at the impressive product. "How much does this cost?" "Five thousand dollars, which would be 30,000 Egyptian pounds or so," I said. "God help us," he said. "He did.

Pale blemish to front of box along with three tiny Bumps to upper rear edge of box. A Very Fine, Pristine, Presumably unread copy in a Fine,though subtely disfigured, case. LEC prospectus laid-in.

Item #8563