It is the late sixties, and for the group of friends who meet night after night on the houseboat on the Nile, times have changed. Nasser has ushered in an age of enormous social change, and these middle-aged sons and daughters of the old bourgeoisie are left high and dry, to gather beneath the moonlight, to smoke and chat and inhabit a cozy and enchanted world. But one night Art and Reality collide with unforeseen consequences. In Adrift on the Nile, Mahfouz has given us a  tale, at once thrilling and deeply serious, which exposes the human and artistic dilemmas of modern times.