Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz died today. Here is a comprehensive list of his work and his ideas.

Naguib Mahfouz is considered one of the foremost writers in modern Arabic literature. Born in the al-Jamaliyya district of Cairo, Egypt, on December 11, 1911, he was the youngest of seven children and lived there until the age of six (or twelve, depending on biographer). He began his writing career at the age of 17 He published his first novel in 1939 (The Games of Fate), and since that date has written thirty-two novels and thirteen collections of short stories. In his old age he has maintained his prolific output, producing a novel every year. The novel genre, which can be traced back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe, has no prototypes in classical Arabic literature. Although this abounded in all kinds of narrative, none of them could be described as we understand the term "novel" today. Arab scholars usually attribute the first serious attempt at writing a novel in Arabic to the Egyptian author Muhammad Hussein Haykal. The novel, called "Zaynab" after the name of its heroine, and published in 1913, told in highly romanticized terms the story of a peasant girl, victim of social conventions. Soon after, writers like Taha Hussein, Abbas Al-Aqqad, Ibrahim Al-Mazini and Tawfiq Al-Hakim were to venture into the unknown realm of fiction.

The picture of the world as it emerges from the bulk of Mahfouz's work is very gloomy indeed, though not completely despondent. It shows that the author's social utopia is far from being realized. Mahfouz seems to conceive of time as a metaphysical force of oppression. His novels have consistently shown time as the bringer of change, and change as a very painful process, and very often time is not content until it has dealt his heroes the final blow of death. To sum up, in Mahfouz's dark tapestry of the world there are only two bright spots. These consists of man's continuing struggle for equality on the one hand and the promise of scientific progress on the other; meanwhile, life is a tragedy. Mahfouz creates an intricate pattern of verbal irony which he weaves into the very texture of the novel and maintains throughout. This pattern of verbal irony engenders in the reader an awareness of the incongruity between the object and mode of expression, i.e. the realistic situation and the hyperbolic terms in which it is rendered. This awareness creates and sustains, all the way through, a sense of dramatic irony where the reader is, as it were, cognizant of a basic fact of which the protagonist is ignorant, namely that his obsession has misguided him. It is in the creation and sustainment of this pattern of verbal irony, and in the complete subjugation of the novelistic experience to a language order originally alien to it, that Mahfouz has achieved a feat unprecedented not only in his own work but probably in Arabic fiction altogether.

In awarding the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature to Naguib Mahfouz, the Swedish Academy of Letters noted that "through works rich in nuance - now clearsightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous - (Mahfouz) has formed an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind." Mahfouz is the author of more than thirty novels. "He is not only a Hugo and a Dickens, but also a Galsworthy, a Mann, a Zola and a Jules Romains." - Edward Said, London Review of Books.

From the Washington Post

Declared an infidel by Muslim militants because of his portrayal of God, Mahfouz survived a knife attack in 1994 that damaged a nerve and seriously impaired his ability to use his writing hand.

"They are trying to extinguish the light of reason and thought. Beware," Mahfouz said after the attack.

Al-Azhar, the highest Islamic authority in Egypt, banned his 1959 novel "Children of Gabalawi" on the grounds that it violated Islamic rules by including characters who clearly represented God and the prophets.

Born on December 11, 1911 in Cairo, the son of a merchant, Mahfouz was the youngest son in a family of four sisters and two brothers.

He obtained his philosophy degree from Cairo University at the age of 23, at a time when many Egyptians had only a primary education. He worked in the government's cultural section until retiring in 1971.

WORK ANGERED MANY

Mahfouz, who rose to prominence following his portrayal of Egypt under British occupation and the autocratic rule of President Gamal Abdel Nasser that followed, influenced writers across the Arab world.

But his fame rested on views that have attracted the anger of military and religious officials in Egypt and Arab countries.

Mahfouz's 1945 book "New Cairo" combined social criticism and psychological insight to portray living characters in popular quarters of Cairo. It adopted a realistic style that critics say started a new school of Arab writing. Another four realistic works followed.

Mahfouz stopped writing between 1949 and 1956 while he observed the changes that saw the fall of the monarchy, the end of British rule and the rise of the military under Nasser.

But he came back full force with a trilogy that covertly attacked the new army rulers. In the three works, Mahfouz narrated developments in Egypt through the eyes of a middle class family over three generations.

In the 1960s, when no Egyptians dared voice dissent, he indirectly criticized Nasser's rule in "Small talk on the Nile" and "Miramar."

Mahfouz's support of Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel brought him the wrath of many Arab countries, who banned his novels. But many of his works have been made into Arabic films and his books have been widely sold across the Arab world.

Mahfouz publicly opposed Islamic militancy, but before the 1994 assassination bid he had declined police protection. Two men were hanged in 1995 for the attack.

Mahfouz's funeral is set for Thursday.