La chambre n°12 and other stories

Naguib Mahfouz

With France culture

Room No. 12, The Train Driver, and Oblivion : three short stories that strike by the masterful way in which Naguib Mahfouz infuses the absurd and an unsettling strangeness into the most ordinary aspects of everyday life.

Go to the next content

Cour du musée Calvet © Christophe Raynaud de Lage

Presentation

Each summer, France Culture takes over the courtyard of the Calvet Museum for a week of readings, poetry, thought, and artistic creations. In resonance with the Festival d’Avignon’s programme, this edition celebrates Arab culture and language—its literature and musicality. Renowned actresses and actors will lend their voices to emblematic texts, joined by writers, poets, musicians, and guest artists specially invited for the occasion.

La chambre n°12 and other stories, Naguib Mahfouz

Through the diversity of their themes and the skillful portrayal of social life in a sprawling city undergoing rapid change, Naguib Mahfouz’s short stories offer an essential complement to his major novels.

Naguib Mahfouz
Born in Cairo in 1911, Naguib Mahfouz was the first Arabic-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1988. He is the author of over fifty novels and short story collections, and is widely recognized as one of the most important writers of the Arab world.

Distribution

With Reda Kateb, Lou-Adriana Bouziouane, and Fida Mohissen
Original music and performance Carla Pallone
Directed by Louise Loubrieu
Assistant director Céline Schaeffer
Room No. 12, The Train Driver, and Oblivion were translated from Arabic (Egypt) by Martine Houssay and published by Actes Sud in the Sindbad collection, in the short story collections Room No. 12 and Other Stories and The Secret Organization and Other Stories.