Mohammed Hussein Haikal's Zainab
Subtitle: the first Egyptian novel
By: translated from the Arabic by John Mohammed Grinsted.
Contributors: Grinsted, John Mohammed.
Publisher: Darf Publishers
Published: 1989
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 215
Other titles: Zainab.
Work titles: Zaynab.
First sentence: It was the time when the world comes back to life, when the total silence which reigns over the peasant villages during the night is broken by the call of the muezzin and the crow of the cockerel.
Description: The story of an Egyptian farm worker as she tries to come to terms with the difficult circumstances of an arranged marriage which she does not want.  This first authentic Arabic novel portrays and explores the customs and traditions of rural Egyptian at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Notes: Arabic ed. first published in 1913.
Table of contents: class: section