I must confess that I have not read even a portion of the bulk off Naguib Mahfouzes work. He has written over forty novels, hundredths of articles and screenplays and is still in his old age actively writing, despite being severely wounded and subsequently crippled by a "religious" maniac. Nonetheless, it clear that his writing has a certain clearness, a way of looking into the heart of man and despite the honesty of it, leaving us with ambiguity and uncertainty. He makes it clear to us that people are not always what they seem to be and what seems to be moral to one person is trespassing and ultimate sin to another. Moreover, people in his works seem to hover without difficulty between righteousness and a world of shadows. This view of reality and all that is compromises, seems to be the bulwark and foundation of his work and especially these supernatural short stories.

In the first and longest story, the seventh heaven,a young man is killed by his best friend out of envy for a woman.The young man, Raouf,encounters Heaven and it is absolutely not what he expects it to be.He is judged by an ancient Egyptian priest called Abu, who decides whether to let him rise to the second heaven immediately, punish him by reincarnation into a lower life, or send him as a spiritual guide to a lost soul. Raouf learns that the brutal man controlling his alley, the father of his murderous friend, is actually Adolph Hitler and Raoufs own mother an infamous Egyptian serial killer, who unknowingly chose the righteous pass with the help of her spiritual guide. He meets historical figures from Egypt and from world history, such as Woodrow Wilson and Akhenaton, who is trying to redeem himself by guiding sinners for over a thousandth years, but seems to fail every time. Raouf is judged as not yet worthy of the second heaven and send as a spiritual guide to his friend Anous. It suffices to say that the whole story and its premise are in striking contrast to Islamic orthodoxy. In "The Disturbing Occurrences" a man appears both sophisticated and benevolent to some and satanic and sadistic to others, all the while the police man investigating him is rendered incapable of deciding which one of the two is his true persona. In "Room No.12" an unwary hotel manager is occupied by the demands of a strange aristocratic lady and her more then unusual guests, when all hell breaks loose. Death, sin, virtue and tradition play a very important part in the allegory of Mahfouz's stories. In "The Rose Garden" a clash btween the traditional view of the deceased in Egypt and modern innovation lead to a murder, while in "A Warning from Afar" the spirits of the deceased threaten to march onto a sinful neighborhood as vengeful skeletons.

The stories and parables contained in this collection,with some stories having a time difference of over thirty years,are beautifully thought out reflections on death, virtue,truth and simple human confusion in the bustle and hectic of life. They are rich in allegory and metaphors, very often hovering between pessimism and hope, even reflecting on the unexpected hope and spiritual rebirth (take that literal) that death can bring. No matter what our opinion on his ability to depict the mysterious and otherworldly, Mahfouz's literary and intellectual statue remains unscathed and these stories are worth reading, if only to send a delightful shiver down our spine, or to make us pause for a moment and rethink important matters and convictions which we hold certain.