This two-volume boxed set about legendary Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy differs from other books about him by exploring the personality and intentions of the highly complex persona rather than just his architecture. To do so, this comprehensive publication examines Fathy's life story, writings, architectural projects, and inspirations in two volumes, subdivided into four parts.

Volume I, Biography and Writings, Part I, "A Transcendent Life" provides an extensively researched profile of Fathy gleaned from information uncovered in interviews of clients, family members, friends, former employees and acquaintances, plus new translations of his numerous letters and journals.

Part II, "A Hassan Fathy Reader", is the result of these translations. When Fathy offered his archive to the Aga Khan Award for Architecture just before his death, they commissioned Chant Avedissian to catalog it; his list contains 242 entries for the writings, which are in Arabic, English or French. This Reader contains a voluminous edited selection from both this list and other sources.

Volume II, Architecture and Inspirations, Part III, "A Living Architecture", covers Fathy's architectural oeuvre chronologically. Thorough descriptions of each project accompany reproductions of the architect's own drawings, and photographs by Fathy or by friends or photographers he has hired, as well as images by the author of extant buildings and digital renderings created to represent those not realized.

Part IV, "Universal Sources of Creativity", includes each of the many architectural, historical, cultural and philosophical sources that stoked his vivid imagination, examining the influences that emerge in a myriad of ways in his architecture.

After initially conforming to western trends, the creative evolution documented here reveals Fathy's commitment to create a singular architectural language that represents the history and culture of his country and religion. His search for a signature style is first revealed in gouaches shown in the book, and he spent a lifetime mastering the skill he needed to realize that idyllic vision. Nubia facilitated that journey, and the technique of building arches, vaults and domes in mud brick that he discovered there led to the life-changing commission from the Egyptian Department of Antiquities in 1945 to design and build New Gourna village. The difficulties he encountered are all addressed here, accompanied by beautiful images by Greek photographer Dimitri Papadimos.

After work on Gourna halted in 1948, Fathy completed several residential projects and schools, but the misrepresentations that followed sent him into self-exile with Doxiadis Associates in Athens in 1957, in a phase documented with rare images obtained from the Constantinos Doxiadis archive. Soon after Gamal Abdel Nasser became the President of Egypt in 1956, he enticed Fathy to return home by offering him the Directorship of the Pilot Project for Housing. Discovery of an aquifer beneath the Kharga Oasis led the Organization for Desert Development to propose an agricultural community called new Baris there; Fathy's previous experience with a similar project made him the logical choice to do it. New photography by the author, and specially commissioned site plans complement Fathy's own documentation of this important project.

Always an inveterate multitasker, Fathy also accepted a commission in 1965 by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in collaboration with the United Nations to design prototypical villages in Ad-Dir'iyah, near Riyadh, and Al Jumum near Makkah, for others to be built throughout the Kingdom.

The author's long experience in this region has facilitated the addition of extensive new information and images about these sparsely understood assignments.

James Steele is an architect who received his first Undergraduate degree from Lafayette College, and both his second Undergraduate Bachelor's as well as his Master's Degrees in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia; his final degree was obtained in the Louis Kahn Master's class. He then went on to obtain his PhD in Urban Planning at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. In 1980, he joined the faculty of King Faisal (now renamed Dammam) University, in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, and taught there until 1988. During this time, he published his first book, on the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy, with Academy Editions, London, which was also the first serious monograph on Fathy's work. It was released the year he left Dammam University to take a position as Senior Editor with Academy Editions in London, and Lecturer at the Prince of Wales's School of Architecture, then based at Magdalen College Oxford. While there, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture asked him to archive Fathy's work then held by them, before being transferred to the American University in Cairo, published as The Hassan Fathy Collection: a Catalogue of Visual Documents at the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, in 1990, and then also to serve as Editor of two Aga Khan Award books, Architecture for a Changing World, in 1992, and Architecture for Islamic Societies Today, in 1994, both by Academy Editions, who also published his The Architecture of the Contemporary Mosque, with Ismail Serageldin the following year. James Steele has published over 50 additional books, including a second book on Fathy entitled Architecture for People: The Complete Works of Hassan Fathy with Thames and Hudson in 1997. Several recent volumes such as Rasem Badran, Narratives on People and Place with Thames and Hudson, in 2005, Jafar Tukan: Poetry in Stone with Gulf Pacific Press in 2014, and Abdelhalim Ibrahim Abdelhalim: An Architecture of Collective Memory, by the AUC Press, are also the first major studies of each, as part of an ongoing commitment to give Arab architects a voice.

Susanna Woo Seierup is an educator who earned her Undergraduate degree in Design from the University of California at Los Angeles and her Master's degree in Architecture from Harvard University, Graduate School of Design. Beginning in 2003, she served on the faculty of the University of Southern California School of Architecture, teaching undergraduate design studio before focusing on architectural history and teaching the World History of Architecture course series, first in partnership with James Steele, and then on her own until 2022. She is the editor of Brooks + Scarpa Architects: A Journey of Discovery, published by Gulf Pacific Press in 2020, and also edited a three-book series focusing on the works of Hassan Fathy in Saudi Arabia, consisting of Hassan Fathy: Years in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; Hassan Fathy: The Al-Diriyya Projects in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 1964-1965; and Hassan Fathy: Projects in Jeddah, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; all with Gulf Pacific Press in 2023.