Following the al Jawad family into the awakening world of the 1920s, where increased freedoms prove as troubling as domination and repression once did. Like Palace Walk, Palace of Desire affords a fascinating look at a period of modern Egyptian history by lovingly and painstakingly examining the day-to-day lives of a single family.

Naguib Mahfouz was born in 1911 in the crowded Cairo district of Gamaliya. He wrote nearly 40 novel-length works, plus hundreds of short stories and numerous cinema plots and scenarios. He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1988. He died in Cairo on August 30, 2006 at the age of 94.