"Life is a miracle. Let me sleep, and go away happy because your miracle is still there." This is what Mustafa, one of the members of the Al-Deeb family, engraved on a marble slab to serve as his tombstone. In this epic novel, Izzat Al-Qamhawi traces the lives of four generations of the Al-Deeb family in the village of Al-Ash, which gathered peasants fleeing Ottoman taxes. They founded it themselves on swampy land in the Sharkia Governorate hundreds of years ago. Among the novel's characters are heroes and thieves, love fatalities and war martyrs. Events follow at a rapid pace between reality and imagination, between seriousness and sarcasm, and take place in an area that extends beyond the borders of Egypt to Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Italy and Belgium. The family members are dispersed between different countries and cities, but they are restricted and "the nest" remains the last refuge. The elderly grandmother, Mubaraka, is waiting for them, who kept in her heart the lover of her youth thanks to his distinctive scent, which she describes as "the smell of a man." "Beit El Deeb" is a long narrative journey full of imagination, victories and humiliations

صدرت الطبعة الأولى من الرواية عام 2010، حصلت على ميدالية نجيب محفوظ عام 2012، وصدرت ترجمتها الإنجليزية عام 2013 عن دار نشر الجامعة الأمريكية بتوقيع المترجمة نانسي روبرتس، كما صدرت ترجمتها الصينية عن دار الحكمة ودار الثقافات بالصين بتوقيع المترجمة نيو زيمو والمترجم شي وي.