 As a literary critic, Farghali has been the quickest to dismiss such middle-brow, best-selling "phenomena" as Alaa Al-Aswany's The Yacoubian Building; and his principal argument against such books is that they pander to a growing but limited—and limiting—worldwide market, that "they are not novels at all, but illusions".Yet from a history-of-literature point of view, Abnaa Al-Gabalwi is probably the closest we have come to a fulfilment of the prophecy that a home-grown Magic Realism Movement would emerge in the new millennium.1-Bettejah Al Ma'aqi (toward the eyes) Sharqeyyat 1997, a short story collection.