by Najib Mahfuz

Born December 11, 1911, in the al-Gamaliyah neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt, Najib Mahfuz (also spelled Naguib Mahfouz) is the most renowned figure in Arabic literature today. He has gained this distinction not only because he is the only Arab writer to date to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature (1988) but also because his fiction evinces a profound understanding of human nature at large and of the Egyptian consciousness in particular. To read Mahfuz’s literature is to encounter Egypt and Egyptians in a deeply reflective way. Mahfuz is often described as the writer of Cairo’s middle class because his fiction deals with transformations that have affected it throughout the twentieth century. He is a novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. Mahfuz’s fiction has frequently been divided into four categories: novels that center on history (1939-44); realistic/naturalistic novels (1945-52); symbolic, metaphysical, and existentialist narratives (1960s...