Naguib Mahfouz
Encyclopedia
Naguib Mahfouz was an Egypt
ian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature
, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism
. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films.
(1882–1974), the renowned Coptic
physician who delivered him. Mahfouz was the seventh and the youngest child in a family that had five boys and two girls. The family lived in two popular districts of the town, in el-Gamaleyya, from where they moved in 1924 to el-Abbaseyya, then a new Cairo suburb; both provided the backdrop for many of Mahfouz's writings. His father, whom Mahfouz described as having been "old-fashioned", was a civil servant, and Mahfouz eventually followed in his footsteps. In his childhood Mahfouz read extensively. His mother often took him to museums and Egyptian history later became a major theme in many of his books.
The Mahfouz family were devout Muslims and Mahfouz had a strictly Islamic upbringing. In an interview, he elaborated on the stern religious climate at home during his childhood years. He stated that "You would never have thought that an artist would emerge from that family."
The Egyptian Revolution of 1919
had a strong effect on Mahfouz, although he was at the time only seven years old. From the window he often saw British soldiers firing at the demonstrators, men and women. "You could say," he later noted, "that the one thing which most shook the security of my childhood was the 1919 revolution." After completing his secondary education, Mahfouz entered King Fouad I University (now the University of Cairo), where he studied philosophy, graduating in 1934. By 1936, having spent a year working on an M.A., he decided to become a professional writer. Mahfouz then worked as a journalist at er-Risala, and contributed to el-Hilal and Al-Ahram
. The major Egyptian influence on Mahfouz's thoughts of science and socialism in the 1930s was Salama Moussa
, the Fabian
intellectual.
.
A longtime civil servant, Mahfouz served in the Ministry of Mortmain Endowments, then as Director of Censorship in the Bureau of Art, Director of the Foundation for the Support of the Cinema, and finally as a consultant to the Ministry of Culture.
Mahfouz left his post as the Director of Censorship and was appointed Director of the Foundation for the Support of the Cinema. He was a contributing editor for the leading newspaper Al-Ahram and in 1969 he became a consultant to the Ministry of Culture, retiring in 1972.
He published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian films. He was a board member of the publisher Dar el-Ma'aref. Many of his novels were serialized in Al-Ahram, and his writings also appeared in his weekly column, "Point of View". Before the Nobel Prize only a few of his novels had appeared in the West.
with Israel in 1978, his books were banned in many Arab countries until after he won the Nobel Prize.
Like many Egyptian writers and intellectuals, Mahfouz was on an Islamic fundamentalist "death list". He defended Salman Rushdie after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
condemned Rushdie to death in 1989, but also criticized his Satanic Verses
as "insulting" to Islam. Mahfouz believed in freedom of expression and although he did not personally agree with Rushdie's work, he did not believe that there should be a fatwa condemning him to death for it. He also condemned Khomeini for issuing the fatwa, for he did not believe that the Ayatollah was representing Islam.
In 1989, after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa
calling for Salman Rushdie and his publishers to be killed
, Mahfouz called Khomeini a terrorist. Shortly after Mahfouz joined 80 other intellectuals in declaring that "no blasphemy
harms Islam and Muslims so much as the call for murdering a writer."
. Death threats against Mahfouz followed, including one from the "blind sheikh," Egyptian theologian Omar Abdul-Rahman. Like Rushdie, Mahfouz was given police protection, but in 1994 Islamic extremists almost succeeded in assassinating the 82-year-old novelist by stabbing him in the neck outside his Cairo home. He survived, permanently affected by damage to nerves in his right hand. After the incident Mahfouz was unable to write for more than a few minutes a day and consequently produced fewer and fewer works. Subsequently, he lived under constant bodyguard protection. Finally, in the beginning of 2006, the novel was published in Egypt with a preface written by Ahmad Kamal Aboul-Magd.
After the threats, Mahfouz stayed in Cairo with his lawyer Nabil Mounier Habib. Mahfouz and Mounir would spend most of their time in Mounir's office; Mahfouz used Mounir's library as a reference for most of his books. Mahfouz stayed with Mounir until his death.
and Halldor Laxness
. At the time of his death, he was the only Arabic-language writer to have won the Nobel Prize.
In July 2006, Mahfouz sustained an injury to his head as a result of a fall. He remained ill until his death on August 30, 2006 in a Cairo hospital.
In his old age Mahfouz became nearly blind, and though he continued to write, he had difficulties in holding a pen or a pencil. He also had to abandon his daily habit of meeting his friends at coffeehouses. Prior to his death, he suffered from a bleeding ulcer, kidney
problems, and cardiac failure.
Mahfouz was accorded a state funeral with full military honors on August 31, 2006. His funeral took place in the Al-Rashdan Mosque in Nasr City
in Cairo.
Mahfouz dreamed that all of the social classes of Egypt, including the very poor, would join his funeral procession. However, attendance was tightly restricted by the Egyptian government amid protest by mourners.
in a series of books. However, following the third volume, Mahfouz shifted his interest to the present, the psychological impact of the social change on ordinary people.
Mahfouz's central work in the 1950s was the Cairo Trilogy
, an immense monumental work of 1,500 pages, which the author completed before the July Revolution. The novels were titled with the street names Palace Walk
, Palace of Desire
, and Sugar Street. Mahfouz set the story in the parts of Cairo where he grew up. They depict the life of the patriarch el-Sayyed Ahmed Abdel Gawad and his family over three generations, from World War I
to the 1950s, when King Farouk I was overthrown. With its rich variety of characters and psychological understanding, the work connected Mahfouz to such authors as Balzac
, Dickens
, Tolstoy
, and Galsworthy
. Mahfouz ceased to write for some years after finishing the trilogy. Disappointed in the Nasser
régime, which had overthrown the monarchy in 1952, he started publishing again in 1959, now prolifically pouring out novels, short stories, journalism, memoirs, essays, and screenplays.
Tharthara Fawq Al-Nīl ("Chatter on the Nile"; 1966) is one of his most popular novels. It was later made into a film featuring a cast of top actors during the time of president Anwar al-Sadat. The film/story criticizes the decadence of Egyptian society during the Nasser era. It was banned by Sadat to avoid provocation of Egyptians who still loved former president Nasser. Copies were hard to find prior to the late 1990s. Mahfouz's prose is characterised by the blunt expression of his ideas. His written works covered a broad range of topics, including socialism
, homosexuality
, and God. Writing about some of these subjects was prohibited in Egypt.
The Children of Gebelawi
(1959, also known as "Children of our Alley") one of Mahfouz's best known works, has been banned in Egypt for alleged blasphemy over its allegorical portrayal of God and the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths of Judaism
, Christianity
, and Islam, until the ban was released in 2006. It portrayed the patriarch Gebelaawi and his children, average Egyptians living the lives of Cain and Abel, Moses
, Jesus
, and Mohammed. Gebelawi has built a mansion in an oasis in the middle of a barren desert; his estate becomes the scene of a family feud which continues for generations. "Whenever someone is depressed, suffering or humiliated, he points to the mansion at the top of the alley at the end opening out to the desert, and says sadly, 'That is our ancestor's house, we are all his children, and we have a right to his property. Why are we starving? What have we done?'" The book was banned throughout the Arab world, except in Lebanon
, and in Egypt where the novel was published in 2006. In the 1960s, Mahfouz further developed its theme that humanity is moving further away from God in his existentialist
novels. In The Thief and the Dogs (1961) he depicted the fate of a Marxist
thief, who has been released from prison and plans revenge.
In the 1960s and 1970s Mahfouz began to construct his novels more freely and to use interior monologues. In Miramar (1967) he developed a form of multiple first-person narration. Four narrators, among them a Socialist and a Nasserite opportunist, represent different political views. In the center of the story is an attractive servant girl. In Arabian Nights and Days (1981) and in The Journey of Ibn Fatouma (1983) Mahfouz drew on traditional Arabic narratives as subtexts. Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth (1985) is about conflict between old and new religious truths.
Many of his novels were first published in serialized form, including Children of Gebelawi and Midaq Alley
which was adapted into a Mexican film starring Salma Hayek
(El callejón de los milagros
).
Mahfouz described the development of his country in the 20th-century. He combined intellectual and cultural influences from East and West - his own exposure to the literarature of non-Egyptian culture began in his youth with the enthusiastic consumption of Western detective stories, Russian classics, and such modernist writers as Marcel Proust
, Franz Kafka
and James Joyce
. Mahfouz's stories are almost always set in the heavily populated urban quarters of Cairo, where his characters, mostly ordinary people, try to cope with the modernization of society and the temptations of Western values.
. He was also attracted to socialist and democratic ideals early on in his youth. The influence of socialist ideals is strongly reflected in his first two novels, Al-Khalili and New Cairo, and also in many of his latter works. However, in spite of his firm belief in socialism, Mahfouz was never a Marxist in any sense of the word.
Parallel to his sympathy for socialism and democracy was his antipathy towards Islamic extremism as expressed by the Muslim Brotherhood
in Egypt. He strongly criticized radical Islam in his works and contrasted between the merits of Socialism and the demerits of Islamic extremism in his first two novels. He perceived Islamism as critically delineated and rejected it as unsuitable for all times. In his memoirs, he stated that out of all the forces active in Egyptian politics during his youth, he always despised the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mahfouz had personally known Sayyid Qutb
in his youth, when the latter was showing a greater interest in literary criticism than in Islamic fundamentalism
; Qutb later became a significant influence on the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, Qutb was one of the first critics to recognize Mahfouz's talent in the mid-1940s. Mahfouz even visited Qutb when the latter was in the hospital, during the 1960s, near the end of his life. In his semi-autobiographical novel, Mirrors, he drew a very negative portrait of Sayyid Qutb.
He was greatly disillusioned with the 1952 revolution and by Egypt's defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War
. He supported the principles of the revolution but became disillusioned, saying that the practices failed to live up to them.
Naguib Mahfouz influenced a new generation of Egyptian lawyers, including Nabil Mounir and Reda Aslan.
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature
Arabic literature
Arabic literature is the writing produced, both prose and poetry, by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is adab which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, and implies politeness, culture and enrichment....
, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films.
Early life and education
Born into a lower middle-class Muslim family in the Gamaleyya quarter of Cairo, Mahfouz was named after Professor Naguib Pasha MahfouzNaguib Pasha Mahfouz
Naguib Mikhail Mahfouz is known as the father of obstetrics and gynaecology in Egypt and was a pioneer in obstetric fistula.-Early life:Mahfouz was born to a Coptic Christian family on the January 5, 1882 in the city of Mansoura in the delta of Egypt. He joined Kasr El Aini Medical School in 1898,...
(1882–1974), the renowned Coptic
Coptic
Coptic may refer to:*The Copts: were a major ethnic group in Egypt. This term described all the people living in Egypt under Roman rule during the 4th to 6th centuries A.D., and until the Muslims took over....
physician who delivered him. Mahfouz was the seventh and the youngest child in a family that had five boys and two girls. The family lived in two popular districts of the town, in el-Gamaleyya, from where they moved in 1924 to el-Abbaseyya, then a new Cairo suburb; both provided the backdrop for many of Mahfouz's writings. His father, whom Mahfouz described as having been "old-fashioned", was a civil servant, and Mahfouz eventually followed in his footsteps. In his childhood Mahfouz read extensively. His mother often took him to museums and Egyptian history later became a major theme in many of his books.
The Mahfouz family were devout Muslims and Mahfouz had a strictly Islamic upbringing. In an interview, he elaborated on the stern religious climate at home during his childhood years. He stated that "You would never have thought that an artist would emerge from that family."
The Egyptian Revolution of 1919
Egyptian Revolution of 1919
The Egyptian Revolution of 1919 was a countrywide revolution against the British occupation of Egypt and Sudan. It was carried out by Egyptians and Sudanese from different walks of life in the wake of the British-ordered exile of revolutionary leader Saad Zaghlul, and other members of the Wafd...
had a strong effect on Mahfouz, although he was at the time only seven years old. From the window he often saw British soldiers firing at the demonstrators, men and women. "You could say," he later noted, "that the one thing which most shook the security of my childhood was the 1919 revolution." After completing his secondary education, Mahfouz entered King Fouad I University (now the University of Cairo), where he studied philosophy, graduating in 1934. By 1936, having spent a year working on an M.A., he decided to become a professional writer. Mahfouz then worked as a journalist at er-Risala, and contributed to el-Hilal and Al-Ahram
Al-Ahram
Al-Ahram , founded in 1875, is the most widely circulating Egyptian daily newspaper, and the second oldest after al-Waqa'i`al-Masriya . It is majority owned by the Egyptian government....
. The major Egyptian influence on Mahfouz's thoughts of science and socialism in the 1930s was Salama Moussa
Salama Moussa
Salama Moussa Born into a wealthy, land owning Coptic family in the town of Zagazig located in the Nile delta. Salama Musa was a journalist, writer, advocator of secularism, and pioneer of Arab socialism. He wrote or translated 45 published books; his writings still influence Arab thought and he...
, the Fabian
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...
intellectual.
Civil service
Mahfouz left academia and pursued a career in the Ministry of Religious affairs. However, he was soon moved to a role in the Ministry of Culture as the official responsible for the film industry, due to his apparent atheismAtheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
.
A longtime civil servant, Mahfouz served in the Ministry of Mortmain Endowments, then as Director of Censorship in the Bureau of Art, Director of the Foundation for the Support of the Cinema, and finally as a consultant to the Ministry of Culture.
Mahfouz left his post as the Director of Censorship and was appointed Director of the Foundation for the Support of the Cinema. He was a contributing editor for the leading newspaper Al-Ahram and in 1969 he became a consultant to the Ministry of Culture, retiring in 1972.
Marriage
Mahfouz remained a bachelor until the age of 43. The reason for his late marriage was that he laboured under his conviction that with its numerous restrictions and limitations, marriage would hamper his literary future. In 1954, he married an Egyptian woman, with whom he had two daughters.He published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian films. He was a board member of the publisher Dar el-Ma'aref. Many of his novels were serialized in Al-Ahram, and his writings also appeared in his weekly column, "Point of View". Before the Nobel Prize only a few of his novels had appeared in the West.
Clash with fundamentalists
Mahfouz did not shrink from controversy outside of his work. As a consequence of his outspoken support for Sadat's Camp David peace treatyCamp David Accords
The Camp David Accords were signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on September 17, 1978, following thirteen days of secret negotiations at Camp David. The two framework agreements were signed at the White House, and were witnessed by United States...
with Israel in 1978, his books were banned in many Arab countries until after he won the Nobel Prize.
Like many Egyptian writers and intellectuals, Mahfouz was on an Islamic fundamentalist "death list". He defended Salman Rushdie after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
Ruhollah Khomeini
Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was an Iranian religious leader and politician, and leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran...
condemned Rushdie to death in 1989, but also criticized his Satanic Verses
Satanic Verses
The Satanic Verses was a purported incident where a small number of apparently pagan verses were temporarily included in the Qur'an by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, only to be later removed...
as "insulting" to Islam. Mahfouz believed in freedom of expression and although he did not personally agree with Rushdie's work, he did not believe that there should be a fatwa condemning him to death for it. He also condemned Khomeini for issuing the fatwa, for he did not believe that the Ayatollah was representing Islam.
In 1989, after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa
Fatwa
A fatwā in the Islamic faith is a juristic ruling concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar. In Sunni Islam any fatwā is non-binding, whereas in Shia Islam it could be considered by an individual as binding, depending on his or her relation to the scholar. The person who issues a fatwā...
calling for Salman Rushdie and his publishers to be killed
The Satanic Verses controversy
The Satanic Verses controversy was the heated and sometimes violent Muslim reaction to the publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. Many Muslims accused Rushdie of blasphemy or unbelief and in 1989 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie...
, Mahfouz called Khomeini a terrorist. Shortly after Mahfouz joined 80 other intellectuals in declaring that "no blasphemy
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
harms Islam and Muslims so much as the call for murdering a writer."
Attempted assassination
The appearance of The Satanic Verses brought back up the controversy surrounding Mahfouz's novel Children of GebelawiChildren of Gebelawi
Children of Gabalawi, is a novel by the Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. It is also known by its Egyptian dialectal transliteration, Awlad Haretna, formal Arabic transliteration, Awlaadu Haaratena and by the alternative translated transliteral Arabic title of "Children of Our...
. Death threats against Mahfouz followed, including one from the "blind sheikh," Egyptian theologian Omar Abdul-Rahman. Like Rushdie, Mahfouz was given police protection, but in 1994 Islamic extremists almost succeeded in assassinating the 82-year-old novelist by stabbing him in the neck outside his Cairo home. He survived, permanently affected by damage to nerves in his right hand. After the incident Mahfouz was unable to write for more than a few minutes a day and consequently produced fewer and fewer works. Subsequently, he lived under constant bodyguard protection. Finally, in the beginning of 2006, the novel was published in Egypt with a preface written by Ahmad Kamal Aboul-Magd.
After the threats, Mahfouz stayed in Cairo with his lawyer Nabil Mounier Habib. Mahfouz and Mounir would spend most of their time in Mounir's office; Mahfouz used Mounir's library as a reference for most of his books. Mahfouz stayed with Mounir until his death.
Death and funeral
Prior to his death, Mahfouz was the oldest living Nobel Literature laureate and the third oldest of all time, trailing only Bertrand RussellBertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
and Halldor Laxness
Halldór Laxness
Halldór Kiljan Laxness was a twentieth-century Icelandic writer. Throughout his career Laxness wrote poetry, newspaper articles, plays, travelogues, short stories, and novels...
. At the time of his death, he was the only Arabic-language writer to have won the Nobel Prize.
In July 2006, Mahfouz sustained an injury to his head as a result of a fall. He remained ill until his death on August 30, 2006 in a Cairo hospital.
In his old age Mahfouz became nearly blind, and though he continued to write, he had difficulties in holding a pen or a pencil. He also had to abandon his daily habit of meeting his friends at coffeehouses. Prior to his death, he suffered from a bleeding ulcer, kidney
Kidney
The kidneys, organs with several functions, serve essential regulatory roles in most animals, including vertebrates and some invertebrates. They are essential in the urinary system and also serve homeostatic functions such as the regulation of electrolytes, maintenance of acid–base balance, and...
problems, and cardiac failure.
Mahfouz was accorded a state funeral with full military honors on August 31, 2006. His funeral took place in the Al-Rashdan Mosque in Nasr City
Nasr City
Nasr City is a district of Cairo, Egypt. It is located to the east of the Cairo Governorate and consists mostly of condominiums. It was established in the 1960s as an extension to neighboring suburb of Heliopolis. The establishment of the district was part of the Egyptian Government's plan to...
in Cairo.
Mahfouz dreamed that all of the social classes of Egypt, including the very poor, would join his funeral procession. However, attendance was tightly restricted by the Egyptian government amid protest by mourners.
Views, writing style, and themes
Most of Mahfouz's early works were set in el-Gamaleyya. Abath Al-Aqdar (Mockery of the Fates) (1939), Rhadopis (1943), and Kifah Tibah (The Struggle of Thebes) (1944), were historical novels, written as part of a larger unfulfilled project of 30 novels. Inspired by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) Mahfouz planned to cover the whole history of EgyptEgypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
in a series of books. However, following the third volume, Mahfouz shifted his interest to the present, the psychological impact of the social change on ordinary people.
Mahfouz's central work in the 1950s was the Cairo Trilogy
Cairo Trilogy
The Cairo Trilogy or ) is a trilogy of novels written by the Egyptian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz.The three novels are, in order:* Palace Walk...
, an immense monumental work of 1,500 pages, which the author completed before the July Revolution. The novels were titled with the street names Palace Walk
Palace Walk
Palace Walk is a novel by Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, and the first installment of Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy. Originally published in 1956 with the title Bayn al-qasrayn , the book was translated into English in 1990...
, Palace of Desire
Palace of Desire
Palace of Desire is a novel by Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, and the second installment of Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy. It was originally published in Arabic in 1957 with the title Qasr el-Shōq....
, and Sugar Street. Mahfouz set the story in the parts of Cairo where he grew up. They depict the life of the patriarch el-Sayyed Ahmed Abdel Gawad and his family over three generations, from World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
to the 1950s, when King Farouk I was overthrown. With its rich variety of characters and psychological understanding, the work connected Mahfouz to such authors as Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
, Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
, and Galsworthy
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...
. Mahfouz ceased to write for some years after finishing the trilogy. Disappointed in the Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of...
régime, which had overthrown the monarchy in 1952, he started publishing again in 1959, now prolifically pouring out novels, short stories, journalism, memoirs, essays, and screenplays.
Tharthara Fawq Al-Nīl ("Chatter on the Nile"; 1966) is one of his most popular novels. It was later made into a film featuring a cast of top actors during the time of president Anwar al-Sadat. The film/story criticizes the decadence of Egyptian society during the Nasser era. It was banned by Sadat to avoid provocation of Egyptians who still loved former president Nasser. Copies were hard to find prior to the late 1990s. Mahfouz's prose is characterised by the blunt expression of his ideas. His written works covered a broad range of topics, including socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
, and God. Writing about some of these subjects was prohibited in Egypt.
The Children of Gebelawi
Children of Gebelawi
Children of Gabalawi, is a novel by the Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. It is also known by its Egyptian dialectal transliteration, Awlad Haretna, formal Arabic transliteration, Awlaadu Haaratena and by the alternative translated transliteral Arabic title of "Children of Our...
(1959, also known as "Children of our Alley") one of Mahfouz's best known works, has been banned in Egypt for alleged blasphemy over its allegorical portrayal of God and the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths of Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
, Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, and Islam, until the ban was released in 2006. It portrayed the patriarch Gebelaawi and his children, average Egyptians living the lives of Cain and Abel, Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
, Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
, and Mohammed. Gebelawi has built a mansion in an oasis in the middle of a barren desert; his estate becomes the scene of a family feud which continues for generations. "Whenever someone is depressed, suffering or humiliated, he points to the mansion at the top of the alley at the end opening out to the desert, and says sadly, 'That is our ancestor's house, we are all his children, and we have a right to his property. Why are we starving? What have we done?'" The book was banned throughout the Arab world, except in Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
, and in Egypt where the novel was published in 2006. In the 1960s, Mahfouz further developed its theme that humanity is moving further away from God in his existentialist
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
novels. In The Thief and the Dogs (1961) he depicted the fate of a Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
thief, who has been released from prison and plans revenge.
In the 1960s and 1970s Mahfouz began to construct his novels more freely and to use interior monologues. In Miramar (1967) he developed a form of multiple first-person narration. Four narrators, among them a Socialist and a Nasserite opportunist, represent different political views. In the center of the story is an attractive servant girl. In Arabian Nights and Days (1981) and in The Journey of Ibn Fatouma (1983) Mahfouz drew on traditional Arabic narratives as subtexts. Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth (1985) is about conflict between old and new religious truths.
Many of his novels were first published in serialized form, including Children of Gebelawi and Midaq Alley
Midaq Alley (novel)
This article is about the Naguib Mahfouz novel. For the film of the novel, see El callejón de los milagros. For the alley, see Khan El-Khalili....
which was adapted into a Mexican film starring Salma Hayek
Salma Hayek
Salma Valgarma Hayek Jiménez de Pinault is a Mexican film actress, director and producer. She received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her role as Frida Kahlo in the film Frida.-Early life:...
(El callejón de los milagros
El callejón de los milagros
El callejón de los milagros is an award-winning 1994 Mexican film adapted from the novel by Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, written by Vicente Leñero and directed by Jorge Fons...
).
Mahfouz described the development of his country in the 20th-century. He combined intellectual and cultural influences from East and West - his own exposure to the literarature of non-Egyptian culture began in his youth with the enthusiastic consumption of Western detective stories, Russian classics, and such modernist writers as Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
, Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
and James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
. Mahfouz's stories are almost always set in the heavily populated urban quarters of Cairo, where his characters, mostly ordinary people, try to cope with the modernization of society and the temptations of Western values.
Political influence
Most of Mahfouz's writings mainly dealt with politics, a fact which he himself once emphasized: "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". He greatly espoused Egyptian nationalism in many of his works, and expressed sympathies for the post-World-War era Wafd PartyWafd Party
The Wafd Party was a nationalist liberal political party in Egypt. It was said to be Egypt's most popular and influential political party for a period in the 1920s and 30s...
. He was also attracted to socialist and democratic ideals early on in his youth. The influence of socialist ideals is strongly reflected in his first two novels, Al-Khalili and New Cairo, and also in many of his latter works. However, in spite of his firm belief in socialism, Mahfouz was never a Marxist in any sense of the word.
Parallel to his sympathy for socialism and democracy was his antipathy towards Islamic extremism as expressed by the Muslim Brotherhood
Muslim Brotherhood
The Society of the Muslim Brothers is the world's oldest and one of the largest Islamist parties, and is the largest political opposition organization in many Arab states. It was founded in 1928 in Egypt by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna and by the late 1940s had an...
in Egypt. He strongly criticized radical Islam in his works and contrasted between the merits of Socialism and the demerits of Islamic extremism in his first two novels. He perceived Islamism as critically delineated and rejected it as unsuitable for all times. In his memoirs, he stated that out of all the forces active in Egyptian politics during his youth, he always despised the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mahfouz had personally known Sayyid Qutb
Sayyid Qutb
Sayyid Qutb was an Egyptian author, educator, Islamist theorist, poet, and the leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and '60s....
in his youth, when the latter was showing a greater interest in literary criticism than in Islamic fundamentalism
Islamic fundamentalism
Islamic fundamentalism is a term used to describe religious ideologies seen as advocating a return to the "fundamentals" of Islam: the Quran and the Sunnah. Definitions of the term vary. According to Christine L...
; Qutb later became a significant influence on the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, Qutb was one of the first critics to recognize Mahfouz's talent in the mid-1940s. Mahfouz even visited Qutb when the latter was in the hospital, during the 1960s, near the end of his life. In his semi-autobiographical novel, Mirrors, he drew a very negative portrait of Sayyid Qutb.
He was greatly disillusioned with the 1952 revolution and by Egypt's defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
. He supported the principles of the revolution but became disillusioned, saying that the practices failed to live up to them.
Naguib Mahfouz influenced a new generation of Egyptian lawyers, including Nabil Mounir and Reda Aslan.
Works
- Old Egypt (1932) مصر القديمة
- Whisper of Madness (1938) همس الجنون
- Mockery of the Fates (1939) عبث الأقدار
- Khufu's WisdomKhufu's WisdomKhufu's Wisdom is an early novel by the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz. It was originally published in Arabic in 1939. An English translation by Raymond Stock appeared in 2003. The novel is one of several that Mahfouz wrote at the beginning of his career, with Pharaonic Egypt as their setting...
(1939) - Rhadopis of NubiaRhadopis of NubiaRhadopis of Nubia is an early novel by the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz. It was originally published in Arabic in 1943. An English translation by Anthony Calderbank appeared in 2003. The novel is one of several that Mahfouz wrote at the beginning of his career, with Pharaonic Egypt as their setting...
(1943) رادوبيس - The Struggle of Thebes (1944) كفاح طيبة
- Modern Cairo (1945) القاهرة الجديدة
- Khan El-KhaliliKhan el-Khalilithumb|200px|An old chandeliers shop at Khan el-KhaliliKhan el-Khalili is a major souk in the Islamic district of Cairo. The bazaar district is one of Cairo's main attractions for tourists and Egyptians alike.-History:...
(1945)خان الخليلي - Midaq AlleyMidaq Alley (novel)This article is about the Naguib Mahfouz novel. For the film of the novel, see El callejón de los milagros. For the alley, see Khan El-Khalili....
(1947) زقاق المدق - The Mirage (1948) السراب
- The Beginning and The EndThe Beginning and the EndThe Beginning and the End may refer to:*Alpha and Omega , an appellation of God in the book of Revelation*The Beginning and the End , by Bizzy Bone*"The Beginning and the End", a song by Isis from the album Oceanic...
(1950) بداية ونهاية - Cairo TrilogyCairo TrilogyThe Cairo Trilogy or ) is a trilogy of novels written by the Egyptian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz.The three novels are, in order:* Palace Walk...
(1956–57) الثلاثية - Palace WalkPalace WalkPalace Walk is a novel by Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, and the first installment of Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy. Originally published in 1956 with the title Bayn al-qasrayn , the book was translated into English in 1990...
(1956) بين القصرين - Palace of DesirePalace of DesirePalace of Desire is a novel by Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, and the second installment of Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy. It was originally published in Arabic in 1957 with the title Qasr el-Shōq....
(1957) قصر الشوق - Sugar Street (1957) السكرية
- Children of GebelawiChildren of GebelawiChildren of Gabalawi, is a novel by the Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. It is also known by its Egyptian dialectal transliteration, Awlad Haretna, formal Arabic transliteration, Awlaadu Haaratena and by the alternative translated transliteral Arabic title of "Children of Our...
(1959) أولاد حارتنا - The Thief and the DogsThe Thief and the DogsThe Thief and the Dogs is one of the Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz's most celebrated works. He further developed his theme of existentialism using stream-of-consciousness and surrealist techniques...
(1961) اللص والكلاب - Quail and Autumn (1962) السمان والخريف
- God's World (1962) دنيا الله
- Zaabalawi (1963)زعبلاوي
- The SearchThe Search (novel)The Search is a novel written and published by Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz in 1964. It was translated from Arabic into English in 1987 by Mohamed Islam, edited by Magdi Wahba, and published by Doubleday in 1991....
(1964) الطريق - The BeggarThe BeggarThe Beggar is a 1965 novella by Naguib Mahfouz about the failure to find meaning in existence. It is set in post-revolutionary Cairo during the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser.-Plot summary:...
(1965) الشحاذ - Adrift on the Nile (1966) ثرثرة فوق النيل
- MiramarMiramar (novel)Miramar is a novel authored by Naguib Mahfouz, an Egyptian Nobel Prize-winning author. It was written in 1967 and translated into English in 1978.-Plot summary:...
(1967) ميرامار - The Pub of the Black Cat (1969) خمارة القط الأسود
- A story without a beginning or an ending (1971) حكاية بلا بداية ولا نهاية
- The Honeymoon (1971) شهر العسل
- Mirrors (1972) المرايا
- Love under the rain (1973) الحب تحت المطر
- The Crime (1973) الجريمة
- al-Karnak (1974) الكرنك
- Respected Sir (1975) حضرة المحترم
- The HarafishThe HarafishThe Harafish is a novel written by Naguib Mahfouz. It comprises a series of episodes in a dozen generations of a family from the Egyptian urban rabble . Many of the members of this family become clan chiefs in an alley in the city; some of them are benefactors to the other members of the...
(1977) ملحمة الحرافيش - Love above the Pyramid Plateau (1979) الحب فوق هضبة الهرم
- The Devil Preaches (1979) الشيطان يعظ
- Love and the Veil (1980) عصر الحب
- Arabian Nights and DaysArabian Nights and DaysArabian Nights and Days is a novel by Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The novel serves as a sequel and companion piece for One Thousand and One Nights and includes many of the same characters that appeared in the original work such as Shahryar,...
(1981) ليالي ألف ليلة - Wedding SongWedding songWedding song may refer to* "The Wedding Song ", a song by Paul Stookey, of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame.* "Wedding Song", a song by The Psychedelic Furs.* Wedding Song, a novel by Naguib Mahfouz....
(1981) أفراح القبة - One hour remains (1982) الباقي من الزمن ساعة
- The Journey of Ibn FattoumaThe Journey of Ibn FattoumaThe Journey of Ibn Fattouma is a novel written and published by Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz in 1983. It was translated from Arabic into English in 1992 by Denys Johnson-Davies and published by Doubleday.-Plot summary:...
(1983) رحلة ابن فطومة - Akhenaten, Dweller in TruthAkhenaten, Dweller in TruthAkhenaten, Dweller in Truth is a novel written and published by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz in 1985. It was translated from Arabic into English in 1998 by Tagreid Abu-Hassabo.-Plot summary:...
(1985) العائش فى الحقيقة - The Day the Leader was KilledThe Day the Leader was KilledThe Day the Leader was Killed is a novel written and published by Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz in 1983.-Plot summary:The novel follows multiple narratives written in the stream of consciousness format...
(1985) يوم مقتل الزعيم - The Hunger (Al-Go'a) (1986) الجوع
- Speaking the morning and evening (1987) حديث الصباح والمساء
- Fountain and Tomb (1988)
- Echoes of an Autobiography (1994)
- Dreams of the Rehabilitation Period (2004) أحلام فترة النقاهة
- The Seventh Heaven (2005)
- Tharthara Fawq Al-Nīl (1987)
See also
- List of Egyptian authors
- List of African writers
- Bidaya wa nihaya (film) بداية ونهاية
External links
- Naguib Mahfouz on his English publisher's website
- Naguib Mahfouz article from Nobel Prize website
- Nobel Prize press release
- Naguib Mahfouz from Pegasos Author's Calendar
- Cornell biography
- BBC report of death 30 August 2006
- Article dated 31 August 2006 from The Independent: Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz dies aged 94
- Associated Press report dated 31 August 2006 on Naguib Mahfouz's funeral
- Biography and bibliography in French
- -"L'hypothèse naturaliste zolienne dans l'oeuvre de Naguib Mahfouz", by Salah NATIJ - in french, Website Maduba / Invitation àl'adab
- Obituary of Naguib Mahfouz published in Islamica Magazine
- Fouad AjamiFouad AjamiFouad A. Ajami , is a MacArthur Fellowship winning, Lebanese-born American university professor and writer on Middle Eastern issues. He is currently a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution....
, "The Humanist in the Alleys," The New RepublicThe New RepublicThe magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, September 25, 2006, http://www.sais-jhu.edu/programs/mideast/documents/Recent%20Articles/Articles/The%20Humanist%20in%20the%20Alleys.pdf - Naguib Mahfouz Website
- Naguib Mahfouz's influence on Arabic Literature: In the Shadow of the Master, Qantara.de