Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz (December 11 1911 - August 30 2006) was an Egyptian novelist who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Mahfouz was born in the Gamaliya quarter of Cairo, named after Professor Naguib Pasha Mahfouz (1882-1974), the physician who delivered him. 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. 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 Arabic-language films.

Chitchat on the Nile (1971) 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 Gamal Abdel Nasser era. It was banned by Sadat to prevent 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. He has written works covering a broad range of topics, including socialism, homosexuality, and God. Writing about some of the subjects was prohibited in Egypt.

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 callejon de los milagros).

Children of Gebelawi (1959), 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. In 1989, after Khomeini's fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie to be killed for apostasy, Egyptian theologian Omar Abdul-Rahman told a journalist that if Mahfouz had been punished for writing his novel, Rushdie would not have dared publish the Satanic Verses. Sheikh Omar has always maintained that this he was not calling for Mahfouz to be killed, but in 1994 Islamic extremists, believing that he was, attempted to assassinate 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. 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 Abu Almajd.

Due to his outspoken support for Sadat's Camp David peace treaty with Israel, his books were banned in many Arab countries until after he won the Nobel prize.

Prior to his death, Mahfouz was the oldest living Nobel Literature laureate and the third oldest of all time, trailing only Bertrand Russell and Halldor Laxness. At the time of his death, he was the only Arabic-language writer to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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. 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 in Cairo. His funeral took place in the Al Rashdan Mosque in Nasr City on the outskirts of Cairo.

Mahfouz once dreamed that all the social classes of Egypt, including the very poor, would join his funeral procession. In actuality, attendance was tightly restricted.