[4] Samia Mehrez of the American University of Cairo wrote the introduction, which includes a biography of the author and a critical analysis of the works.
[6] Caesar stated that in both novellas "the meaning is not conveyed through rounded characterization, but by what all the relatively flat characters taken together suggest by their actions or inaction.
In the novella, Awadallah, a Coptic umbrella-maker, moves with his wife and children to the countryside to find work and to stop living on his landlady's charity.
Awadallah and his family fear that Ali Effendi will attempt to convert him to Islam but they does not want to offend him, so they accept his charity.
Allen of the University of Wisconsin Center Fox Valley stated that the author believed that the Muslim Brotherhood was "a group of socially disadvantaged hypocrites who mask a will to violence and power behind their religion's call to show charity toward the unfortunate.
"[5] Caesar wrote that "The Muslim Brothers who bully Awadallah into enacting his supposed conversion are formerly confused and uncertain young men who have found a sense of community and mission in fundamentalist Islam that they want to share with others.
"[6] Allen states that the story contrasts the Sufi's "gentle scrupulousness" with the Brotherhood's "aggressive indifference to anything outside their religious/political aims" and that "Awadallah's conversion ceremony is compared, not subtly, to the Crucifixion.
[4] Caesar stated that the characters are "men who have been given the insight and the opportunity to act nobly, but they fail to do so because this action would bring them into conflict with popular opinion.
Caesar stated that the grandson "seems to represent" an alter ego of the elderly man and that he would be "the person the grandfather could have been if he had not become so involved in the petty quarrels and spites of village life.
"[6] Caesar wrote that the novellas were "not just a blending of village Sufism and the existential philosophies of post-war Europe, but a uniquely personal and original vision of what man is and should be" and that they were "intensely lyrical, intellectually provocative, and philosophical".
[6] Allen argued that the novella "Good News from the Afterlife" has "a final impression of irritating pretentiousness" and that compared to "Al-Mahdi" it "is more ambitious and less successful.