In The Day the Leader Was Killed, Mahfouz returns to the use of family structure as a means of chronicling the political and social developments in the Egyptian scene. The study shows Mahfouz's skill to sum up an entire age in a short novel which, despite its shortness, incorporates many of his major themes, even those he dealt with three decades earlier in his trilogy. In his book Real and Imagined Worlds, Morroe Berger writes, “That fictions and history are related is inevitable, since art must have some connection with life, even if only to oppose it” (162). Chinua Achebe argues that literature “must speak of a particular place, evolve out of the necessities of its history, past and current and the aspirations and destinies of its people” (Morning 7). The recent history of Egypt has been the core of Naguib Mahfouz's writing and he was aware of the fact that it is difficult to separate fiction from history. Even in his early historical novels, Mahfouz takes stories not only because they are the facts of the pharoanic past of Egypt but also because when communicated with his imagination they become embodiments of contemporary themes. Mahfouz sets for himself the task of rewriting and re-interpreting the recent history of his country in order to enable his countrymen to understand their past and present and shape their future. He views the Egyptian scene with objectivity which makes him an honest and trustworthy chronicler who fully understands the various forces that play in the socio-political scene. The term political chronicle is used in the sense of examining recent historical events and recording the major events that affected the life of the Egyptian people. In The Day The Leader Was Killed, Mahfouz sees his task as rewriting the recent history in the hope of enlightening his people so that history will not repeat itself. The importance of this task is highlighted by the current events in Egypt and some parts of the Arab World. These events have shown Mahfouz in a new light as a man who understood his society and tried to change it. His vision of that change is realized few years after his death. In The Day The Leader Was Killed Mahfouz aims at exploring themes of responsibility in recent history and cutting through the official versions of it not through using documentary evidence, but through creating a synthesis of the historical and subjective perspectives in a way that