First published in 1966, Naguib Mahfouz’s Adrift on the Nile is an atmospheric novel that dramatizes the rootlessness of Egypt’s cosmopolitan middle class. Anis Zani is a bored and drug-addicted civil servant who is barely holding on to his job. Every evening he hosts a gathering on a houseboat on the Nile, where he and a motley group of cynical and aimless friends share a water pipe full of kif, a mixture of tobacco and marijuana. When a young female journalist—an “alarmingly serious person”—joins them and begins secretly documenting their activities, the group’s harmony starts disintegrating, culminating in a midnight joyride that ends in tragedy.
- ISBN10 0385423330
- ISBN13 9780385423335
- Publish Date 1 January 1994 (first published 1 January 1993)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 25 August 2014
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Random House USA Inc
- Imprint Bantam Dell Publishing Group, Div of Random House, Inc
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 176
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780385423335