# Is "Palace Walk" by Naguib Mahfouz a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (Maktabat Misr, Cairo, 1956) is identified by: The Arabic true first is Bayn al-Qasrayn, Maktabat Misr, Cairo, 1956. Arabic original: Maktabat Misr, Cairo, 1956.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- CENSUS CORRECTED. The Arabic true first is Bayn al-Qasrayn, Maktabat Misr, Cairo, 1956
- The first English-language edition is Palace Walk, translated by William M. Hutchins and Olive E. Kenny, published by The American University in Cairo (AUC) Press, Cairo, in 1989 — which PRECEDES the Doubleday, New York edition of 1990; the census's 'first English Doubleday 1990' is wrong
- AUC Press holds world English rights to Mahfouz and printed the trilogy first, so the scarcer Cairo 1989 (Cairo imprint and 1989 on the title/copyright page) is the true first English, while the common Doubleday 1990 hardcover is only the first American edition
- Publisher imprint reads Maktabat Misr, Cairo
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Naguib Mahfouz |
| Publisher | Maktabat Misr, Cairo |
| Year | 1956 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | CENSUS CORRECTED. The Arabic true first is Bayn al-Qasrayn, Maktabat Misr, Cairo, 1956 |
| Book-club edition exists? | — |

## Points of issue
CENSUS CORRECTED. The Arabic true first is Bayn al-Qasrayn, Maktabat Misr, Cairo, 1956. The first English-language edition is Palace Walk, translated by William M. Hutchins and Olive E. Kenny, published by The American University in Cairo (AUC) Press, Cairo, in 1989 — which PRECEDES the Doubleday, New York edition of 1990; the census's 'first English Doubleday 1990' is wrong. AUC Press holds world English rights to Mahfouz and printed the trilogy first, so the scarcer Cairo 1989 (Cairo imprint and 1989 on the title/copyright page) is the true first English, while the common Doubleday 1990 hardcover is only the first American edition.

## Is this the true first?
Arabic original: Maktabat Misr, Cairo, 1956. First English: AUC Press, Cairo, 1989 (Hutchins & Kenny), preceding Doubleday, New York, 1990 — the Egyptian edition, not the US edition, is the true first in English. Both the AUC Cairo 1989 and the Doubleday 1990 (first American) are collected. This is the first volume of the Cairo Trilogy and the post-Nobel collectible.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
The Doubleday 1990 is a first American but a reprint relative to the AUC 1989 first; Anchor/Doubleday paperbacks (from 1991), the Everyman's Library issue, and the Knopf one-volume The Cairo Trilogy (2001) are all later. Do not treat the widely held Doubleday hardcover as the first English edition.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Palace Walk* by Naguib Mahfouz a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/palace-walk
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.