Adrift on the Nile- Adrift on the Nile is a brief novel by Naguib Mahfouz that portraits the absurdity and emptiness of life in Cairo during the late 1960's, and the yearning for a seriousness. The novel's main setting is a houseboat on the Nile where Anis Zaki, a bored and aimless civil servant, spends his leisure time in a narcotic daze induced by smoking hash. In the evenings Anis serves a group of male and female intellectuals who gather to smoke, banter, and flirt with one another. They have families and jobs but their approach to life is essentially cynical and unserious, until Samara Bahgat arrives and challenges them to examine their lives more seriously.