Background
Naguib Mahfouz was born in the medieval Fatimid quarter of Cairo on December 11, 1911.
His family was a lower middle-class Muslim family.
(Considered by many to be Mahfouz's best novel, Midaq All...)
Considered by many to be Mahfouz's best novel, Midaq Alley centers around the residents of one of the hustling, teeming back alleys of Cairo. No other novel so vividly evokes the sights and sounds of the city. The universality and timelessness of this book cannot be denied.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385264763/?tag=2022091-20
(The tumultuous alley of this rich and intricate novel (fi...)
The tumultuous alley of this rich and intricate novel (first published in Arabic in 1959) is inhabited by a delightful Egyptian family, but is also the setting for a second, hidden, and more daring narrative: the spiritual history of humankind. The men and women of a modern Cairo neighborood unwittingly reenact the lives of their holy ancestors: from the feudal lord who disowns one son for diabolical pride and puts another to the test, to the savior of a succeeding generation who frees his people from bondage. This powerful novel confirms again the richness and variety of Mahfouz's storytelling and his status as "the single most important writer in modern Arabic literature" (Newsweek). From the eBook edition.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385264739/?tag=2022091-20
(The Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz re...)
The Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz refashions the classic tales of Scheherazade into a novel written in his own imaginative, spellbinding style. Here are genies and flying carpets, Aladdin and Sinbad, Ali Baba, and many other familiar stories from the tradition of The One Thousand and One Nights, made new by the magical pen of the acknowledged dean of Arabic letters, who plumbs their depths for timeless truths.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385469012/?tag=2022091-20
( Naguib Mahfouzs magnificent epic trilogy of colonia...)
Naguib Mahfouzs magnificent epic trilogy of colonial Egypt appears here in one volume for the first time. The Nobel Prizewinning writers masterwork is the engrossing story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Britains occupation of Egypt in the early decades of the twentieth century. The novels of The Cairo Trilogy trace three generations of the family of tyrannical patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence. Palace Walk introduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sonsthe tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. Al-Sayyid Ahmads rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination in Palace of Desire, as the world around them opens to the currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoil brought by the 1920s. Sugar Street brings Mahfouzs vivid tapestry of an evolving Egypt to a dramatic climax as the aging patriarch sees one grandson become a Communist, one a Muslim fundamentalist, and one the lover of a powerful politician. Throughout the trilogy, the familys trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years spanning the two World Wars, as change comes to a society that has resisted it for centuries. Filled with compelling drama, earthy humor, and remarkable insight, The Cairo Trilogy is the achievement of a master storyteller.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375413316/?tag=2022091-20
(Palace Walk is the first novel in Nobel Prize-winner Nagu...)
Palace Walk is the first novel in Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouzs magnificent Cairo Trilogy, an epic family saga of colonial Egypt that is considered his masterwork. The novels of the Cairo Trilogy trace three generations of the family of tyrannical patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence. Palace Walk introduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sonsthe tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. The familys trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years spanning the two world wars, as change comes to a society that has resisted it for centuries. Translated by William Maynard Hutchins and Olive E. Kenny
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307947106/?tag=2022091-20
(In this provocative and dreamy parable, a young man disil...)
In this provocative and dreamy parable, a young man disillusioned by the corruption of his homeland sets out on a quest to find Gebel, the land of perfection, from which no one has ever returned. On his way, Ibn Fattouma passes through a series of very different lands--realms where the moon is worshipped, where marriage does not exist, where kings are treated like gods, and where freedom, toleration, and justice are alternately held as the highest goods. All of these places, however, are inevitably marred by the specter of war, and Ibn Fattouma finds himself continually driven onward, ever seeking. Like the protagonists of A Pilgrim's Progress and Gulliver's Travels, Naguib Mahfouz's hero travels not through any recognizable historical landscape, but through timeless aspects of human possibility.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385423349/?tag=2022091-20
Naguib Mahfouz was born in the medieval Fatimid quarter of Cairo on December 11, 1911.
His family was a lower middle-class Muslim family.
From 1934, when Naguib Mahfouz earned a B. A. in philosophy from King Fuad I University (now Cairo University), until 1972 Mahfouz held a variety of civil service positions, while at the same time pursuing a literary career.
Much of Naguib Mahfouz's reputation is based on his 1956–57"Cairo Trilogy"—Bayn al-Qasrayn, Qasr ash-Shawq, and As-Sukkariyya (tr.
as Palace Walk, 1989, Palace of Desire, 1991, and Sugar Street, 1992)—a sweeping series of novels that traces the history of a middle-class Cairo Muslim family through three generations, from 1917 to 1952.
Another well-known novel, Awlad Haratina (1959; tr.
Considered blasphemous by some, it remains controversial in the Arabic-speaking world and was banned in Egypt. In the 19606 Mahfouz abandoned some of his realistic techniques and began to write shorter, faster-paced novels with stream of consciousness narratives and scriptlike dialogue, e. g. , The Search (1964, tr.
1991).
His other novels include Midaq Alley (1947, tr.
1975) and Miramar (1967, tr.
1978).
Among his short stories are those in God's World (tr.
1973).
Mahfouz was an outspoken advocate of peace between Egypt and Israel, a position that made him a controversial figure in his homeland.
In 1994 he was stabbed in an assassination attempt, apparently by an Islamic fundamentalist.
Weakened by age, further debilitated by the attack, and unable to write longer pieces, during his late 806 he began to compose extremely brief dream-based vignettes; a number of them were serialized in Egypt and later collected in The Dreams (2005).
(The tumultuous alley of this rich and intricate novel (fi...)
(In this provocative and dreamy parable, a young man disil...)
(Palace Walk is the first novel in Nobel Prize-winner Nagu...)
(The Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz re...)
(Considered by many to be Mahfouz's best novel, Midaq All...)
( Naguib Mahfouzs magnificent epic trilogy of colonia...)
In 1954, Naguib Mahfouz quietly married a Coptic Orthodox woman from Alexandria, Atiyyatallah Ibrahim.