Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006,) also spelled Najīb Maḥfūẓ, was Egypt’s leading novelist and the first Arab to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Called the “Father of Modern Arabic Literature,” he had a significant impact in the Arab world and was the author from that area best known to the West in the latter half of the 20th century.
Born in the Al-Jamāliyyah old district of Cairo, Mahfouz studied philosophy at King Fuad I (now Cairo) University. He worked in university administration, then for the government’s Ministry of Waqfs (religious foundations) and in journalism. He started writing as a boy and, by 1939, had already written three novels, among them Kifāḥ Ṭība (1944, The Struggle of Thebes.) He later began work on Al-Thulāthiyyah (1956–57, The Cairo Trilogy,) an epoch-making, somewhat autobiographical work about three generations of an Egyptian family between the two World Wars.
Mahfouz’s most debated novel Awlād ḥāratinā (1967; The Children of Gebelawi, 1981) was serialized in Egypt’s leading newspaper Al-Ahram. A metaphorical work which shows his disenchantment with religion, it portrays average Egyptians living the lives of Cain and Abel, Moses, Jesus Christ, and Muhammad. It describes the decline of five communities headed for futility and nihilism. It was banned throughout the Arab world, except in Lebanon.
Mahfouz later became more interested in the plight of the individual, as in Al-Liṣṣ wa-al-kilāb (1961; The Thief and the Dogs,) Al-Shaḥḥādh (1965; The Beggar,) and Mīrāmār (1967; Miramar, 1978.) Described as ‘a Dickens of the Cairo cafes’ and ‘the Balzac of Egypt,’ he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988, the first Arab to receive the award.
Mahfouz’s work is still inaccessible in many Middle Eastern countries on account of his outspoken support for President Anwar Sadat’s Camp David peace treaty with Israel in 1978. In 1994, he survived an assassination attempt but damaged the nerves in his right hand. Mahfouz could not write for more than a few minutes a day and consequently produced fewer works such as Aṣdāʾ al-sīrah al-dhātiyyah (1996; Echoes of an Autobiography.)
The renowned British scholar of Arabic literature Trevor Le Gassick (ed.) wrote the influential Critical Perspectives on Naguib Mahfouz (1991.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Naguib Mahfouz
Happy is he who can give himself up.
—Naguib Mahfouz
When will the state of the country be sound?…. When its people believe that the end result of cowardice is more disastrous than that of behaving with integrity.
—Naguib Mahfouz
You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
—Naguib Mahfouz
Topics: Questions, Questioning, Cleverness, Wisdom
I have condemned Khomeini’s fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie as a breach of international relations and as an assault on Islam as we know it in the era of apostasy. I believe that the wrong done by Khomeini towards Islam and the Muslims is no less than that done by the author himself. As regards freedom of expression, I have said that it must be considered sacred and that thought can only be corrected by counter-thought. During the debate, I supported the boycott of the book as a means of maintaining social peace, granted that such a decision would not be used as a pretext to constrain thought.
—Naguib Mahfouz
Topics: Thought
I am the son of two civilizations that at a certain age in history have formed a happy marriage. The first of these, seven thousand years old, is the Pharaonic civilization; the second, one thousand four hundred years old, is the Islamic civilization.
—Naguib Mahfouz
Topics: History
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