Backgroud

Naguib Mahfouz was born in Cairo in 1911.  He described his father as “Old-Fashioned”.  His mother would often take him to museums, which would later have an impact on his writing.  He began writing when he was 17.  In 1934, he graduated from the University of Cairo where he studied philosophy.  He went on to attain his master’s, but decided to become a professional writer.  He was employed as a civil servant until 1972.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988.  Mahfouz was considered a spokesperson for Egypt and other non-Western cultures.  However, he almost never traveled outside of Egypt.  His daughters accepted the Nobel Prize on his behalf.   In July 2006 as a result of a fall, Mahfouz sustained an injury to his head.  Although he became nearly blind, he continued to write.  He died August 30, 2006 and was buried with full military honors.

Politics & Literature

Naguib Mahfouz once said, “In all my writings, you will find politics.  You may find a story which ignores love or any other subject, but not politics: it is the very axis of our thinking.”  Many of his works embraced Egyptian nationalism.  He was drawn to socialist and democratic ideals.  These ideals were expressed in many of his later works.  He opposed Islamic extremism as expressed by the Muslim brotherhood and strongly criticized Radical Islam in his works.  He also contrasted between the merits of Socialism and the demerits of Islamic Extremism in his works.  He once stated that during his youth he always despised the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Works

Naguib Mahfouz wrote over 30 novels, 100 short stores, and more than 200 articles.  Most of his early works were set in al-Jamaliyyah.  In 1939 he set out to write a series of 30 books that would cover the entire history of Cairo.  By the third book, which was written in 1944, he shifted his writings to the psychological impact of the social change on ordinary people.  Mahfouz went on the write The Cairo Trilogy in the 1950s.  These three novels, Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street, were set in Cairo where he grew up.  The Cairo Trilogy made him famous throughout Arab as a depictor of traditional urban life.  It also connected him to authors such as Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Galsworthy.  His next major work was Children of Gebelawi published in 1959.   It depicts a family of average Egyptians living the lives of Cain and Abel, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed.  It has become one of his best-known works.  When it was published, it was banned in Egypt for allegorical blasphemy over its portrayal of God and the faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  Mahfouz began to write more freely and use interior monologues in the 1960s.  Also banned was his 1966 novel Chitchat on the Nile.  It was banned to prevent provocation of Egyptians who still loved former president Nasser.  In 1961, The Thief and the Dogs was published.  This novel furthered Mahfouz’s technique of stream-of-consciousness.  Disappointment in the revolution and new order in Egypt is reflected in Said’s despair.  Many of Naguib Mahfouz’s literature covered topics of socialism, homosexuality, and God.  Many of which were prohibited in Egypt.  In 1994, Islamic extremists attempted to assassinate him.  After this attempt, he lived under constant protection of a bodyguard.  Mahfouz is one of the leading authors in Egypt.  Tore Frangsmyr of the Nobel Foundation wrote, “Each new publication is regarded as a major cultural event and his name is inevitably among the first mentioned in any literary discussion from Gibraltar to the Gulf.”  

Modern Arabic Literature

Naguib Mahfouz is considered one of the most outstanding Arabic writers of the 20^th century.  His novels depicted realistic social, political, and religious life in Egypt.  He played an important role in the development of fictional writing.  He enriched Arabic literature with a series of social-realist novels.  The main topic of many authors in modern Arabic literature was politics and problems in the society.  Other prominent writers from Egypt include Taha Hussein and Tawfig al-Hakim.  As with many other countries, censorship and the lack of educated readers have restricted literary activity.  

Resources

http://kirjasto.sci.fi/mahfouz.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naguib_Mahfouz

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1988/mahfouz-bio.html

http://www.arabworldbooks.com/authors/naguib_mahfouz.html