SOURCE: “Even in Warm Embraces,” in Times Literary Supplement, July 25, 1997, p. 4.

In the following review of Echoes of an Autobiography, El-Enany compliments the poetic nature of Mahfouz's autobiography and finds it reminiscent of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet.

If you are looking for an autobiography of Naguib Mahfouz, or even for the echoes of one, please ignore this book [Echoes of an Autobiography]. The nearest the author ever got to writing an autobiography was in some of his novels, notably “The Cairo Trilogy,” Mirrors and Fountain and Tomb. However, if what you want is the quintessential Mahfouz; the wisdom of a great mind distilled from thirty-three novels, some 200 short stories and a lifetime of contemplating the human condition, you need look no further. It is all here in this quaint book of mystical aphorisms and parables, which is reminiscent of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke...