Mahfouz, who spun complex social tales out of the apparently unquenchable vivacity of Cairo life, was able to reanimate the models of Balzac and Zola, but more recent Arab writers tend, understandably, toward Kafka or García Márquez.
Women are sold a bit of a myth when it comes to the whole Prince Charming concept but instead of seeing this in negative terms, it's a fantastic opportunity to teach yourself about having perspective, to think critically about the social tales fed to women, and to learn to have a sense of humor about something that can sometimes be taken a little too seriously.
For it is not just the press that wants this to be a moral and social fairy tale, but the institutions of society – the church, the political establishment.
Those reports were not borne out by the police, medical examiner and health department records, but they contributed to the making of a myth, a social-media tale that seemed believable amid so much misery.
Other high points came courtesy of Bernard Rose's Boxing Day – a bracing tour of the foreclosed homesteads of middle America – and Wadjda, Haifaa al-Mansour's heartfelt social-realist tale of an 11-year-old's rebel stance in a Saudi Arabia where girls are forbidden even to laugh outdoors ("a woman's voice is her nakedness," the teacher explains).
Emancipation from such social fairy tales is one of Shakespeare's gifts to mankind of his Promethean fire.
Kids Company's rise and fall is a modern social policy morality tale.
The best twist to this social media fairy tale?
Another of maverick producer/director Stanley Kramer's consciousness-raising social films, this tale proved a potent metaphor for race relations in 1958.
Fairy-tale scholar Jack Zipes outlines the story's social mandate in Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: "The mark of beauty for a female is to be found in her submission, obedience, humility, industry, and patience; the mark of manliness is to be found in a man's self-control, politeness, reason, and perseverance".
