The Meaning of Civilisation is a collection of essays that captures one of Egypt???s most important decades in the prose of one of the Middle East???s most important writers. It stitches together a fascinating and vivid account of the dramatic events of the time, from Egypt???s break with the Soviet Union to the Yom Kippur War with Israel and eventual peace accord and up to Sadat???s assassination by Islamic extremists in 1981. Through this tumultuous history, Mahfouz takes on a diverse array of political topics???including socioeconomic stratification, democracy and dictatorship, and Islam and extremism???which are still of crucial relevance to Egypt???and the world???today. Clear-eyed and direct, the pieces illuminate Mahfouz???s personal and political convictions, which were more often hidden in his novels, enriching his better-known corpus with social, political, and ideological context.