Jump to content

Naguib Mahfouz

Edit links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Abdowikipedia (talk | contribs) at 07:42, 17 October 2006 (→Life and work). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz (Template:Lang-ar, Template:ArabDIN) (December 11 1911 – August 30 2006) was an Egyptian novelist who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Life and work

Naguib Mahfouz was born in the Gamaliya quarter of Cairo; he was 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 best novels ever. It was later on done as a film by a group of best actors and actress at the time of Anwar al-Sadat. The film/story talks about the decadence of the Egyptian society during the Gamal Abdel Nasser era of ruling egypt. The film was banned by Anwar al-Sadat to prevent provocation of the few egyptian people who still loved former president Nasser. The story itself wasn't easily found till late 1990's. Naguib Mahfouz is known by his blunt, honest, to the point and clear thoughts of ideas. He always write about different things, wether it's socialism, communism, homosexuality (even though it's a forbidden aspect in Egypt and in the arab countries and he had even one of his story that was talking about God (still forbiden aspect in the Egyptian and the arab countries.

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).

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 the fatwa for apostasy against Salman Rushdie, a blind Egyptian theologian, Omar Abdul-Rahman, told a journalist that if Mahfouz had been punished for writing this novel, Rushdie would not have dared publish his. Sheikh Omar has always maintained that this was not a fatwa, but in 1994 Islamic extremists, believing that it had been one, attempted to assassinate the 82-year-old novelist, stabbing him in the neck outside his Cairo home. He survived, but suffered severely damaged nerves to 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 President Anwar Sadat's Camp David peace treaty with Israel, his books were banned in many Arab countries. This changed 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 had remained ill since then. He died on Aug 30, 2006 in a Cairo hospital after a heart attack. Prior to that, he had been suffering from a bleeding ulcer, kidney problems and cardiac failure.

Mahfouz was accorded a state funeral with full military honors on Aug 31, 2006 in Cairo. His funeral took place in the Al Rashdan Mosque in Nasr City on the outskirts of Cairo.

Works

References

  • Alamgir Hashmi, The Worlds of Muslim Imagination (1986), ISBN 0-00-500407-1
  • Rasheed El-Enany, Naguib Mahfouz: The Pursuit of Meaning (1993), ISBN 0-415-07395-2

See also

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Naguib_Mahfouz&oldid=81955267"