The Stream of Days: A Student at the Azhar.

HUSSEIN, Taha.

$475.00

Item Number: 146473

Cairo: Al-Maaref Printing & Publishing House, 1943.

Rare first edition (preceding the first British edition) of the autobiography of one of the most influential 20th-century Egyptian writers, translated from the Arabic by Hilary Wayment. Octavo, original tan cloth. In near fine condition. Rare.

Taha Hussein was a leading figure of the Arab Renaissance and the modernist movement in the Arab world who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twenty-one times. Having contracted ophthalmia at the age of two, he became blind as the result of false treatment by an unskilled practitioner and secured a place at Cairo University after having become disillusioned with the traditional education system. An avid proponent of Egyptian nationalism, Hussein criticized the lack of freedom in Nazi Germany and called for free education and the right of everyone to be educated once appointed Minister of Education in 1950. In the West Hussein is best known for his autobiography, 'Al-Ayyam' which was published in English as 'An Egyptian Childhood' and 'The Stream of Days.'