Naguib Mahfouz was born in 1911 in the crowded Cairo district of Gamaliya. He wrote nearly 40 novel-length works, plus hundreds of short stories and numerous cinema plots and scenarios. He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1988. He died in Cairo on August 30, 2006 at the age of 94.

Palace Walk transports us into the life of a Cairo family during Egypt's occupation by British forces in the 1900s. The father, Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, is somber and tyrannical with his wife and children, but at night seeks pleasure in the aesthetic and erotic. His wife, Amina, is a willing prisoner in a society where it is forbidden for a virtuous woman to leave her house except in the company of her husband or adult sons. Aisha, their younger daughter, dares to peer through the mashrabeya from which the women view the world. And Fahmy, their second son, is caught up in the violence that threatens them all as Egypt struggles to become free.