A Tale of Two Cities

If a publisher were to declare that their translation is the best Arabic translation of "A Tale of Two Cities" to date, then we, at Afaq Publishing and Distribution in Cairo, declare that this is the most faithful, complete, and accurate Arabic translation of Charles Dickens' historical masterpiece to have appeared so far. It was translated with immense effort by the distinguished Dr. Shahrat Al-Alam. The novel, of which 200 million copies have been sold to date and which ranks second among the best-selling novels of all time worldwide, is also the best-selling novel among Charles Dickens' own works. Many Dickensian critics also classify it as the best among the works of the great British author, who is considered by critical consensus to be the greatest English novelist of the Victorian era, and some consider him the greatest even today. A novel of revolution, brutality, and love, its events unfold in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution, where the working and lower classes in France suffer under the brutality of the aristocrats. Then, the uprising of the revolutionaries during the revolution turns into brutality that eliminates both the guilty and the innocent. Between one brutality and another, a one-sided love affair emerges, ending with a great lesson in self-sacrifice for the happiness of others. The novel begins with lines considered among the most beautiful and famous opening lines of novels: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us."