Sage's staff

Author's name: Tawfiq Al-Hakim

In this book, Tawfiq al-Hakim revives a long-established Arab tradition by adopting his famous cane as a symbolic mask for conversation with oneself, others, and society. Instead of the camel, the sky, the companion, the beloved, and other symbols that the ancient Arab poet excelled at summoning to convey his sorrows, longings, and creative poetry, al-Hakim engages in dialogue with his cane, adopting it as an artistic pretext for documenting his reflections on life, society, and art—favorite themes in his entire literary output. The Cane of the Sage is a collection of articles published separately between 1946 and 1951, in which Tawfiq al-Hakim, with his keen eye, his easy, graceful style, and his precise formulation, observed some of the social, political, and humanitarian problems that plagued our Egyptian and Eastern societies in the middle of the last century. It is astonishing that nearly 65 years after the publication of these articles, the problems al-Hakim observed and wrote about appear to exist on their own, staring back at us with a mocking smile.