What is the Egyptian literary establishment coming to? The controversy surrounding the publication of the nonagenarian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz's novel Awlad Haritna has opened up a can of worms with intellectuals, writers, critics and politicians using the altercation for their own ends. The text was first serialised in Al-Ahram in 1959, but its publication was discontinued when it was deemed objectionable, and it was never published in book form in Egypt. Now an "Egyptian" edition is paradoxically to be printed in Beirut.