Region | Egypt
Mahfouz 'revolutionised Arabic fiction'
Egyptian novelist Najeeb Mahfouz, the first Arab writer awarded the coveted Nobel Prize, died on Wednesday at the age of 94.
- By Ramadan Al Sherbini, Correspondent
- Published: 00:00 August 31, 2006
- Najeeb Mahfouz takes the credit for evolving modern Arabic fiction, according to Egyptian writers.
- Image Credit: AP
Cairo: Egyptian novelist Najeeb Mahfouz, the first Arab writer awarded the coveted Nobel Prize, died on Wednesday at the age of 94.
He takes the credit for evolving modern Arabic fiction, according to Egyptian writers.
"His stories have made places re-emerge as characters of flesh and blood," Ebrahim Abdul Meguid, a novelist, said.
Mahfouz, who has about 40 novels and scores of short stories to his credit, died at a Cairo hospital.
His funeral service will be held today at Cairo's Al Rashdan mosque, where ceremonies are often held for public figures, interior ministry sources said, suggesting President Hosni Mubarak may attend.
Mahfouz, who almost died in 1994 when a radical stabbed him with a knife, was admitted to hospital in mid-July suffering from kidney problems, pneumonia and other ailments related to his age.
He was almost completely deaf and blind at the time of his death.
"Cairo has been a central character in his stories, culminating in the Cairo Trilogy," Abdul Meguid told Gulf News.
In the three-volume masterpiece, Mahfouz traces the misfortunes of three generations of a middle class merchant in Egypt between the two World Wars.
"Mahfouz's ingenuity in capturing the spirit of the place is not limited to Cairo, where he was reared and set most his masterpieces. Alexandria [Egypt's second biggest city] was the setting for some of his famed novels such as The Autumn and the Quail and Miramar," he said, referring to two works in which Mahfouz sharply criticised the then regime of President Jamal Abdul Nasser for alleged social and intellectual malaise.
Abdul Meguid was the first writer to win the Najeeb Mahfouz Prize for Letters created by the American University in Cairo after he won the Nobel Prize.
"I think tourists, who visit Egypt, are inspired by Mahfouz's stories. They come to Cairo to see the places, which he explained in great detail in his novels."
Abdul Meguid believes that Cairo's streets were as vividly portrayed by Mahfouz as the streets of London were immortalised in Charles Dickens' fiction.
Several of Mahfouz's works were named after famous places in Cairo. "At his hand, the alleys become a symbol of the universe as is exemplified by his The Children of our Alley," he said.
Art critics believe that Mahfouz's birth and life for some years in the Old Cairo of Jamaliya has deeply influenced his fiction.
"Life in Jamaliya gave Mahfouz insight into the folk life. He was keen to draw on them in his writings. Jamaliya even inspired him with the idea of the alley as a symbol of society and the universe or a symbol of life and mankind," said literary critic Rajaa Al Naqash.
"His works are populated by characters living on the edge of life," said writer Salwa Bakr. "Probably these characters and their exciting realms are what make his works timeless and insightful. They can be seen around us because reasons for backwardness and poverty persist," added Bakr in a critique in the local magazine Al Mussawer.
"Mahfouz was not an iconoclast," said writer Yousuf Al Sharouny. "He did not seek to uproot social values. Rather he wanted to disseminate awareness to make life better," he said.
Al Sharouny stressed that Mahfouz had introduced into Arabic fiction new trends, including allegory.
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