SOURCE: “The Human Comedy in Cairo,” in New Republic, Vol. 202, No. 19, May 7, 1990, pp. 32–36.

In the following essay, Ghosh provides an overview of Mahfouz's life and career as well as evaluating his contribution to modern Arabic literature.

I.

In Egypt, the news that the writer Naguib Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1989 was greeted with the kind of jubilation that Egyptians usually reserve for soccer victories. Even though the fundamentalists sounded an ominous note, most people in Cairo were overjoyed. Months later everybody was still full of it. People would tell anecdotes about how the good news had reached Mahfouz. Swedish efficiency has met its match in Cairo's telephones: the news had broken over the wires before the committee (or whatever) could get through to Mahfouz. He was asleep, taking his afternoon siesta (no, it was early in the morning, and he just hadn't woken up yet), when...