SOURCE: “From ‘Naguib Mahfouz's Critics,’” in Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition, edited by Michael Beard and Adnan Haydar, Syracuse University Press, 1993, pp. 144–71.

In the following essay, Asfour surveys the critical reaction to Mahfouz's work.

No contemporary Arab man of letters has managed to preoccupy our literary mentality as much as Naguib Mahfouz. His multilayered fictional world, with its complex set of relations and its elusive symbols, provokes unending arguments, lays the groundwork for interminable problems, and stimulates ongoing critical efforts aimed at discovering that world's constituent elements. As long as this fictional world remains a bearer of meaning, a generator of signification, it produces seemingly inexhaustible analytical activity, commentary, and interpretation. On their performative level, these activities may be identical, or they may be in conflict—they may differ or agree in terms of their goal or perspective, yet in the end they present us...