This collection of short stories is the first of Naguib Mahfouz's narrative productions, as it includes 28 stories published in literary magazines that were published during the thirties and forties, stories that revolve around madness. Madness of love, madness of greatness, madness of hunger, madness of money... Through it, Mahfouz presents his vision of justice, love, and freedom. In the story "Fakeness," Mahfouz debunks the deceptive appearances of the aristocracy and reveals its madness with jealousy and competitiveness. In the story "Delirium," he draws an example of the madness resulting from love, where the husband learns of his wife's infidelity while she is delirious as a result of illness, so he refrains from giving her medicine so that she continues to delirium, and decides to commit suicide when she dies in his hands.