Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz (also known as Naguib Mahfouz or Najeeb Mahfouz) was born on December 11, 1911 he died on August 29, 2006. Najib Mahfouz was a Nobel Prize winning Egyptian novelist.
Nagib Mahfouz was born in the Gamaliya quarter of Cairo. His name comes from Professor Nagib Pasha Mahfouz, the physician who delivered him to the world. Najib was a longtime civil servant to the Ministry of Mortmain Endowments. After that, Najib became a Director of Censorship in the Bureau of Art, and then a Director of the Foundation for the Support of theCinema, and, finally, Najib Mahfouz became a consultant to the Ministry of Culture.
Najib Mahfouz publications total to more than 30 novels.
In the year 1988, Najib Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.
Najib Mahfouz first novels were published as serialized form which included Children of Gebelawi and Midaq Alley which was later adapted into a Mexican film starring Salma Hayek, the name of the movie was El callejón de los milagros.
Children of Gebelawi which Najib wrote in 1959 was one of his best known works. Unfortunatly, the novel was banned in Egypt for alleged blasphemy over its allegorical portrayal of God and the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
In the year 1989, after the fatwa for apostasy against Salman Rushdie, a blind Egyptian theologian, Omar Abdul-Rahman, told a journalist that if Mahfouz had been punished for writing this novel, Rushdie would not have dared publish his. Sheikh Omar has always maintained that this was not a fatwa, but in 1994 Islamic extremists, believing that it had been one, attempted to assassinate the 82-year-old novelist, stabbing him in the neck outside his Cairo home. He survived and lived afterward under constant bodyguard protection. Finally, in the beginning of 2006, the novel was published in Egypt with a preface written by Ahmad Kamal Abu almajd
US trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas titled a song on his 2001 album Witness "Mahfouz". The 25-minute piece features singer Tom Waits reading an excerpt from Mahfouz''s works.
Until the day he died, Mahfouz was the oldest living Nobel laureate in Literature and the third oldest of all time, trailing only Bertrand Russell and Halldor Laxness. In July 2006, Mahfouz was taken to intensive care after an injury to his head upon falling. He died on 29 August 2006.
Najib Mahfouz Works
* Old Egypt (1932)
* Whisper of Madness (1938)
* Mockery of Fates (1939)
* Rhadopis of Nubia (1943)
* The Struggle of Tyba (1944)
* The Modern Cairo (1945)
* Khan Al Khalili 1945
* Midaq Alley (1947)
* The Mirage
* The Beginning and The End (1950)
* The Cairo Trilogy
o Palace Walk (1956)
o Palace of Desire (1957)
o Sugar Street (1957)
* The Children of Gebelawi (1959)
* The Thief and the Dogs (1961)
* Quail and Autumn (1962)
* God''s World (1962)
* Zaabalawi (1963)
* The Search (1964)
* The Beggar (1965)
* Chatting on the Nile (1966)
* Miramar (1967)
* Mirrors (1972)
* Al Karnak (1974)
* Respected Sir (1975)
* The Harafish (1977)
* Love and the Veil (1980)
* Arabian Nights and Days (1981)
* Wedding Song (1981)
* The Journey of Ibn Fattouma (1983)
* Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth (1985)
* The Fountain and the Tomb (1988)