Najib mahfouz biography
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Naguib Mahfouz
Born
in Cairo, Egyptmånad 11, 1911
Died
August 30, 2006
Genre
Literature & Fiction, Short Stories
Influences
Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul SartrMarcel Proust, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre...more
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Naguib Mahfouz (Arabic author profile: نجيب محفوظ) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films.Naguib Mahfouz (Arabic author profile: نجيب محفوظ) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films....more
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Najib Mahfuz
The Novelist-Philosopher of Cairo
The Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz (as his name is more commonly spelled) is one of those authors - like Norman Mailer or Salman Rushdie - whose biography and political views sometimes overshadow his fiction. Although Mahfouz fills a decidedly smaller stage than Mailer or Rushdie (the Arabic-speaking world rather than the English-speaking one), he dominates it far more thoroughly than does any novelist here. His comments are sought on a huge range of subjects, his life is the stuff of gossip sheets, his influence is felt from think tanks to movie studios, and politicians dare not ignore his views. Indeed, as Menahem Milson writes in his lucid and insightful review of Mahfouz's career, he is both "Egypt's most popular writer" and "the literary conscience of his country" - not a common pairing.
Mahfouz is both "Egypt's most popular writer" and "the literary conscience of his country" - not a common pairing.
The good news is that
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Best summary PDF, themes, and quotes. More books than SparkNotes.
Naguib Mahfouz was one of the world's most renowned Arabic novelists. His work is mostly concerned with his native country of Egypt, and covers a wide range of topics there-in, from middle-class and lower-class life to the civilization's ancient history.
He was born in Cairo in 1911, the youngest of sju children. Religion was very important in his family, who lived in the Gamaliya section of Cairo, where Midaq Alley takes place. Mahfouz began writing at the age of 17. He was deeply influenced by the 1919 Egyptian Revolution, which led him to adopt the nationalist ideals so present in much of his work.
He was educated at a kuttab (a Koranic school). During primary and secondary school, he became entranced bygd classical Arabic literature. However, his earliest influence was Hafiz Najib, a writer of detective novels that he started reading at the age of 10, at the recommendation of an elementary school classm