A Tale of Two Cities

If a publisher were to declare that his translation is the best translation into Arabic so far of the novel "A Tale of Two Cities," then we at Afaaq Publishing and Distribution in Cairo declare this to be the most faithful, complete, and accurate translation into Arabic of the magnificent historical Charles Dickens, so far. And its translation was achieved with extraordinary effort by Dr. Shahrat Al-Alam. The novel, of which over 200 million copies have been sold so far and which holds the second place among the best-selling novels in the world ever, is the same novel that is the best-selling among Charles Dickens' own novels, and many Dickens critics also classify it as the best among the works of the great British writer, who is unanimously considered by critics to be the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, and some even regard him as the greatest to this day. The novel of revolution, brutality, and love, takes place in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution, where the working and lower classes in France are under the tyranny of the aristocrats' brutality, then the uprising of the revolutionaries turns into brutality that destroys both the guilty and the innocent, and between brutality and brutality, a one-sided love relationship develops, 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 spring of hope, it was winter of despair. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us..."