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Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz was born in Gamaliya, Cairo, Egypt, on 1911. He was educated at the Cairo University with a degree in philosophy, his father were both civil servants. He wrote his first novel when he was seventeen years old, from there he has published thirty-two novels and thirteen collections of short stories.
"A study of Mahfouz's output shows his fiction to have passed through four distinguishable stages. The first (1939-1944) comprises three novels based on the history of ancient Egypt. They provide a useful insight into the germination of the then budding young talent.'[1]
Naguib Mahfouz grew up in a middle class family, he is known to be the first Arabic writer to have accomplished many things and he is also an Egyptian writer who was awarded the Novel Prize for Literature in 1988. He graduated in 1934, and after that he decided to become a professional writer. Before he wrote his novels, he worked as a journalist at Ar-Risala. In 1939, he entered government bureaucracy, where he was a civil servant at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and later on became the director of “Foundation for Support of Cinema for the State Cinema Organization” where he stayed until 1954. From 1969-1971 he went to become a consultant for Cinema affairs to the Ministry of Culture.
His first few works were all about historical events, Abath Al-Aqdar (1939), Rabudis (1943) and Kifah Tibah (1944). Then he decided to write about the whole history of Egypt due to the inspiration from Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). On 1969, he left as Director of Censorship and was appointed Director of the Foundation for the Support of Cinema, there he also contributed to the leading newspaper, Al-Ahram. IN 1967, he wrote the book “Miramar” which was a multiple first person narration. Four different narrators, discussing social and political views. In 1981, he wrote Arabian Nights and Days, and wrote The Journey of Ibn Fatouma in 1983 where he used Arabic traditional narratives as subtexts. Naguib Mahfouz, gaining success, was called as the “Balzac of Egypt”.
One of his greatest works was the “The Cairo Trilogy”, written in the 1950’s. It was about a guy named, Al-Sayyid Ahmad Ald Al-Jawad, who is the man of the house, he abused his power by ordering people around. Naguib, narrates how the family lives before and after World War I. The story is full of drama and humor. Basically the plot of the story is the family tries to survive life when the British came in order to colonize Egypt, giving them a harsh time in life.
By exposure to the literary non-Arabic culture, he has combined the different cultural influences from the Eastern and Western countries. Naguib Mahfouz is known to be the not only a spokesperson in Egypt, but also for a number of non-Western cultures. In 1994, Mahfouz was stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife, thus making him nearly blind. The Islamic fundamentalist, group who were responsible for attempting murder were sentence to death in 1995. Now, more than [next page]