THE BEGGAR <i> by Naguib Mahfouz translated by Kristin Walker Henry & Nariman Khales Naili al-Warraki</i> (<i> Anchor: $7.95) </i>

Although Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz is regarded as the premier novelist of the Arab world, little of his work is known in the West. Originally published in 1965, this newly translated novel focuses on the moral failure of the Egypt intelligentsia after the overthrow of King Farouk. The central character, Omar al-Hamzawi, has lost all commitment to the ideals he espoused as a young man. Material success has supplanted the missionary zeal for socialism for which he once risked jail; the dreamy poet-revolutionary has been transformed into a property owner and a man of means. When a nagging emptiness begins to torment him, Omar embarks on a series of vapid liaisons (his fleeting relations with women could scarcely be described as love affairs). But an encounter with an old comrade who has preserved his belief in his ideals--despite years of imprisonment and torture--forces Omar to confront the irrelevance of his existence. Mahfouz continually shifts the narration among the first, second and third persons to offer differing reactions and create a fluid, almost Cubist perspective.