From one of Egypt's greatest contemporary writers, a historical novel which "succeeds brilliantly" (Robert Irwin, Times Literary Supplement) "In the course of my long travels I have never seen a city so devastated. After a long time I ventured out into the streets. Death, cold and heavy, hung in the air. Walls have no value here, doors have been eliminated. No one is certain that they will see another day." This historical novel, first published in Arabic in 1974, is set in early-seventeenth century Mamluk Cairo. It traces the career of Zayni Barakat ibn Mousa as Cairo's puritanically moral and ruthless governor, who employs several corps of spies and informers to rule the city. Gamal al-Ghitani uses various narrative devices including diary extracts, police reports, legal decrees, first-person narratives, and religious discourses, which, together with oblique references to the Cairo of Nasser, give the novel the dimensions of a powerful political and historical fable.