By Naguib Mahfouz "You are the greatest storyteller of our time. You've been telling your tales for the better part of the 20th century and even now old masterpieces of yours are being translated for the world to discover." When Robert Solé told me this I replied that the new French schools of writing had done away with the simple story. "But," said Solé, "that all happened around the middle of the last century. The new school has had its time and the old style is back in vogue. People nowadays are ready to hear stories which is one of the reasons novels are selling so well in France and, what is more, partly explains why your own works have been so eagerly embraced by the French public." The story, though, had always been the foundation on which the art of the novel is built. And though the public may not always appreciate it, attempts at new styles and schools of writing are of great benefit to the novelist. They inject a spirit of artistic experimentation. But this being said the magic of a well-told tale can never be bettered. "You've never abandoned the story, even in your latest extremely short works," Solé said. Each of A Convalescent's Dreams is no more than a paragraph in length, but they tell the story of a whole life." Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy
