Palace of Desire - The Cairo Trilogy Author:Naguib Mahfouz, Najib Mahfuz The second part of "The Cairo Trilogy" by the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. It is a true-life Egyptian family saga featuring the bullying, pompous, belching, self-adoring patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmed and his long-suffering family in domestic turmoil, with feuding in-laws.