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Biography of Najib MahfuzName: Najib MahfuzBirth Date: December 12, 1912 Death Date: N/A Place of Birth: Cairo, Egypt Nationality: Egyptian Gender: Male Occupations: novelist Najib Mahfuz Najib Mahfuz (born 1912) was Egypt's foremost novelist and the first Arab to win the Nobel Prize in literature. He had wide influence in the Arab world and was the author from that area best known to the West in the latter half of the 20th century.Najib Mahfuz was born in the popular quarter Hayy Al-Jamaliyya in Cairo, Egypt, on December 12, 1912, to a middle-class merchant family. During his high school years he began to read the Arabic classics as well as the Western ones that he could find in translation. He proceeded to major in philosophy at Cairo University, and after graduating in 1934 he worked his way up the bureaucracy as a civil servant. He continued to work until he retired as director of the Cinema Organization, after which he worked as a consultant to several governmental cultural organizations. He was a frequent contributor to the daily newspaper Al-Ahram, where …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…In Echoes of an Autobiography(translated by Denys Johnson, New York, Davies/Doubleday, 1997) the author discusses his life and writings. Scholarly articles that treat the different aspects of Mahfuz's writings occur in such journals as Journal of Arabic Literature, Al-Arabiyya, World Literature Today, and several works wholly dedicated to his contribution; S. Sasson's Changing Rhythms, published by Brill, and M. Peled's Religion, My Own are critical analyses of the literary works of Mahfuz. Najib Mahfuz: The Novelist-Philosopher of Cairo, published in 1998, provides a detailed analysis of Mahfuz's major works that is appropriate for all audiences. Mahfouz's reaction to winning the Nobel Prize was reported by William Honan in, "From 'Balzac of Egypt,' Energy and Nuance" and "Egyptian Wins Nobel in Literature," in the October 14th edition of New York Times; his statements about Rushdie were quoted by Esthen Fein, "Book Notes," in the August 5th edition of New York Times. |