Revolution and Cien años de soledad in Naguib Mahfouz\u27s Layālī alf laylah

This article compares two important political novels of the second half of the twentieth century: the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez\u27s Cien anos de soledad (1967) (One Hundred Years of Solitude) and the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz\u27s Layali alf laylah (1982) (Arabian Nights and Days). Mahfouz\u27s Layali alf laylah, a modern Arab adaptation of The Thousand and One Nights, offers, I argue, a reworking of the style of magical realism popularized by Garcia Marquez in his masterwork Cien alios de soledad. Examining Mahfouz\u27s inspiration by Garcia Marquez\u27s Cien anos de soledad reveals a connection between two world literatures that reflects the importance of other, non-Western literature to Arab writers. A reading of Mahfouz\u27s novel through the influence of Garcia Marquez\u27s Cien anos de soledad provides an understanding of some of the literary connections between Latin American and Arabic literatures by focusing on Garcia Marquez\u27s mythologizing of Latin American history and Mahfouz\u27s allegory of Egyptian politics in the 1970s