About a month ago I interviewed Algerian writer Yasmina Khadra. At one point he got quite indignant about the West's lack of knowledge about Arabic writers and said that far too many in our countries still think of Arabs as being only terrorists or caravan riders. While he may have exaggerated somewhat, in essence he was correct because our attitude toward the Arab world has always been condescending.

We have no reason to feel superior, as the Egyptian culture has existed for thousands of years longer then the majority of Western ones. The banks of the Nile River have long been considered one of the cradles of civilization, along with the Fertile Crescent area of the Euphrates River. Ironically, most North Americans probably don't even know who are and aren't Arabians.

For instance, the people of Iran are not Arabs, yet they are routinely shunted in with the rest of the "Arab world." A Muslim is not necessarily an Arab and vice versa. The people of Iran are Persians, not Arab; while the Muslims of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and the rest of Southeast Asia are certainly not Arab. But it is of course far too convenient to think of "the enemy" as a single group with no distinguishing features that will humanize him.

How can you call down fire and brimstone and the wrath of God upon people whose civilization predates Christ by thousands of years? Well, you can't, so you diminish them down into a faceless enemy whose beliefs and civilization have no merit or significance. They become A-rabs, or rag heads, to the masses; easy to hate and to mobilize against.

It was with all this in mind that I set out to find works translated into English by an Arab writer. Just by coincidence I happened to come across a reissuing of three novels by Naquib Mahfouz, the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1988 who just recently died. Three Novels Of Ancient Egypt is a new release through the Everyman Library of Random House Canada containing three short pieces the author had written in the 1930's.

I don't know whether or not Khufu's Wisdom, Rhadopis Of Nubia, or Thebes At War have ever been translated into English before, but this is the first time the three novels have been published together in an omnibus form. They are logical choices to be produced together of course because all three are set in different periods of the glorious days of Egypt's Pharaohs.