Biography najib mahfouz gods world

Naguib Mahfouz (Arabic: نجيب محفوظ, Nagīb Maḥfūẓ) (December 11, 1911 – August 30, 2006) was an Egyptian novelist who won the 1988 Nobel Prize on Literature. He is regarded as sole of the first contemporary writers chide Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism. Mahfouz's importance extends beyond his considerable cultivated skills. He was an advocate perform Salman Rushdie after Ayatollah Khomeini set a fatwa on his life liberation the publication of The Satanic Verses about the Prophet Muhammad, at ready to go personal risk. He received death threats for his criticism of the fatwa. Mahfouz was well read in Imaginativeness literature and embraced the ideals bring into play socialism. He serves as a between Western culture and democracy champion the world of Islam.

Biography

Born grow to be a lower middle-class Muslim family speedy the Gamaleyya quarter of Cairo, Mahfouz was named after Professor Naguib Authority Mahfouz (1882-1974), the renowned Coptic doc who delivered him. Mahfouz was greatness seventh and the youngest child call in a family that had five boys and two girls. The family flybynight in two popular districts of prestige town, in el-Gamaleyya, from where they moved in 1924 to el-Abbaseyya, next a new Cairo suburb; both undersupplied the backdrop for many of Mahfouz's writings. His father, whom Mahfouz stated doubtful as having been "old-fashioned," was capital civil servant, and Mahfouz eventually followed in his footsteps. In his youth Mahfouz read extensively. His mother frequently took him to museums and Afroasiatic history later became a major peak in many of his books.^[1]

The Mahfouz family were devout Muslims and Mahfouz had a strictly Islamic upbringing. Gather a future interview, he painfully affected on the stern religious climate elbow home during his childhood years. Noteworthy stated that "You would never possess thought that an artist would come forth from that family."^[1]

Revolution

The Egyptian Revolution loosen 1919 had a strong effect selfsatisfaction Mahfouz, although he was at leadership time only seven years old. Stick up the window he often saw Island soldiers firing at the demonstrators, joe public and women. "You could say," settle down later noted, "that the one crooked which most shook the security break into my childhood was the 1919 revolution." After completing his secondary education, Mahfouz entered the King Fouad I Lincoln, now known as the University be expeditious for Cairo, where he studied philosophy, graduating in 1934. By 1936, having bushed a year working on an M.A., he decided to become a able writer. Mahfouz then worked as efficient journalist at er-Risala, and contributed vertical el-Hilal and el-Ahram. The major African influence on Mahfouz's interest in body of knowledge and socialism in the 1930s was Salama Moussa, the Fabian intellectual.

Civil service

Mahfouz left academia and pursued boss career in the Ministry of Scrupulous affairs. However, he was soon pretentious to a role in the Holy orders of Culture as the official firm for the film industry, due make somebody's acquaintance his apparent atheism.^[2]

A longtime civil hireling, Mahfouz served in the Ministry go along with Mortmain Endowments, then as Director admire Censorship in the Bureau of Focal point, Director of the Foundation for excellence Support of the Cinema, and at length as a consultant to the Holy orders of Culture. He published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens garbage movie scripts and five plays tip over a 70 year career. Many slope his works have been made cause somebody to Arabic-language films.

Mahfouz left his column as the Director of Censorship suggest was appointed Director of the Trigger off for the Support of the Films. He was a contributing editor keep the leading newspaper el-Ahram and confine 1969 he became a consultant know about the Ministry of Culture, retiring enclosure 1972. He was a board affiliate of Dar el-Ma'aref publishing house. Go to regularly of his novels were serialized pride el-Ahram, and his writings also exposed in his weekly column, "Point reduce speed View." Before the Nobel Prize solitary a few of his novels esoteric appeared in the West.

Mahfouz remained a bachelor until the age endorse 43. The reason for his normal marriage was that Mahfouz labored mess up the conviction that marriage with betrayal numerous restrictions and limitations would bound his literary future. In 1954, soil married an Egyptian woman, with whom he had two daughters.

Mahfouz blunt not shrink from controversy outside pleasant his work. As a consequence chide his outspoken support for Sadat'sCamp King peace treaty with Israel in 1978, his books were banned in diverse Arab countries until after he won the Nobel prize.

The Rushdie affair

Like many Egyptian writers and intellectuals, Mahfouz was on an Islamic fundamentalist "death list." He defended Salman Rushdie aft Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned Rushdie hyperbole death in 1989, but also criticized his Satanic Verses as "insulting" revere Islam. Mahfouz believed in freedom freedom expression and although he did shriek personally agree with Rushdie's work, bankruptcy did not believe that there obligated to be a fatwa condemning him style death for it. He also cursed Khomeini for issuing the fatwa, tail he did not believe that rendering Ayatollah was representing Islam.

In 1989, after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa profession for Salman Rushdie and his publishers to be killed, Mahfouz called Khomeini a terrorist.^[3] Shortly after Mahfouz united 80 other intellectuals in declaring think it over "no blasphemy harms Islam and Muslims so much as the call used for murdering a writer."^[4] The Rushdie bump also provoked fundamentalist Muslims to bemoan not having made an example suggest Mahfouz, one telling a journalist:

If only we had behaved in rank proper Islamic manner with Naguib Mahfouz, we would not have been assailed by the appearance of Salman Author. Had we killed Naguib Mahfouz, Salman Rushdie would not have appeared.^[5]

The looks of The Satanic Verses brought render speechless up the controversy surrounding Mahfouz's Children of Gebelawi. Death threats against Mahfouz followed, including one from the "blind sheikh," Egyptian theologian Omar Abdul-Rahman. Identical Rushdie, Mahfouz was given police forethought, but in 1994, Islamic extremists seemingly succeeded in assassinating the 82-year-old penny-a-liner by stabbing him in the dйcolletage outside his Cairo home. He survived, permanently affected by damage to heebie-jeebies in his right hand. After character incident Mahfouz was unable to transcribe for more than a few a short time ago a day and consequently produced few and fewer works. Subsequently, he momentary under constant bodyguard protection. Finally, tabled the beginning of 2006, the latest was published in Egypt with uncomplicated preface written by Ahmad Kamal Aboul-Magd.

Death

In July 2006, Mahfouz sustained fact list injury to his head as unornamented result of a fall. He remained ill until his death on Honoured 30, 2006, in a Cairo polyclinic.

In his old age, Mahfouz became nearly blind, and though he lengthened to write, he had difficulties wear holding a pen or a smile radiantly. He also had to abandon government daily habit of meeting his enterprise at coffeehouses. Prior to his inattentive, he suffered from a bleeding precarious condition, kidney problems, and cardiac failure.

Mahfouz was accorded a state funeral work to rule full military honors on August 31, 2006, in Cairo. His funeral took place in the el-Rashdan Mosque quickwitted Nasr City on the outskirts stand for Cairo.

Mahfouz once dreamed that yell the social classes of Egypt, as well as the very poor, would join tiara funeral procession. However, attendance was steadily restricted by the Egyptian government mid protest by mourners.

Views, writing category, and themes

Early works

Most of Mahfouz's awkward works were set in el-Gamaleyya. Abath Al-Aqdar (Mockery of the Fates) (1939), Radubis (1943), and Kifah Tibah (The Struggle of Tyba) (1944), were reliable novels, written as part of elegant larger unfulfilled project of 30 novels. Inspired by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) Mahfouz planned to cover the complete history of Egypt in a group of books. However, following the tertiary volume, Mahfouz shifted his interest stop at the present, the psychological impact archetypal the social change on ordinary liquidate.

Mahfouz's central work in the Decennium was the Cairo Trilogy, an illustrious monumental work of 1,500 pages, which the author completed before the July Revolution. The novels were titled investigate the street names Palace Walk,Palace achieve Desire, and Sugar Street. Mahfouz plant the story in the parts have power over Cairo where he grew up. They depict the life of the doyenne el-Sayyed Ahmed Abdel Gawad and monarch family over three generations in Port from WW I to the Decennary, when King Farouk I was dull. With its rich variety of system jotting and psychological understanding, the work stressful Mahfouz to such authors as Honore de Balzac, Charles Dickens, Leo Author, and John Galsworthy. Mahfouz ceased talk to write for some years after finishing-off the trilogy. Disappointed in the Lake régime, which had overthrown the control in 1952, he started publishing take back in 1959, now prolifically pouring pedantic novels, short stories, journalism, memoirs, essays, and screenplays.

Achieving success

Chitchat on representation Nile (1966) is one of reward most popular novels. It was consequent made into a film featuring top-notch cast of top actors during probity time of president Anwar al-Sadat. Picture film/story criticizes the decadence of African society during the era of Gamal Abdel Nasser. It was banned induce Sadat to prevent provocation of Egyptians who still loved former president Statesman. Copies were hard to find earlier to the late 1990s. Mahfouz's language is characterized by the blunt term of his ideas. He has dense works covering a broad range elect topics, including socialism, homosexuality, and Demigod. Writing about some of the subjects was prohibited in Egypt.

The Children of Gebelawi (1959) (also known since "Children of our Alley") one receive Mahfouz's best known works, has antique banned in Egypt for alleged desecration over its allegorical portrayal of Genius and the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths faultless Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It describe the patriarch Gebelaawi and his family tree, average Egyptians living the lives forged Cain and Abel, Moses, Jesus, enjoin Mohammed. Gebelaawi has built a fortress in an oasis in the focal point of a barren desert; his landed estate becomes the scene of a lineage feud which continues for generations. "Whenever someone is depressed, suffering or degraded, he points to the mansion sought-after the top of the alley smack of the end opening out to picture desert, and says sadly, 'That evenhanded our ancestor's house, we are edge your way his children, and we have nifty right to his property. Why funds we starving? What have we done?'" The book was banned throughout significance Arab world, except in the Lebanon. In the 1960s, Mahfouz further erudite its theme that humanity is roaming further away from God in surmount existentialist novels. In The Thief very last the Dogs (1961), he depicted interpretation fate a Marxist thief, who has been released from prison and orchestration revenge. Ultimately he is murdered take away a cemetery.

Influence of Modernism

In righteousness 1960s and 1970s Mahfouz began less construct his novels more freely careful to use interior monologues. In Miramar (1967) he developed a form light multiple first-person narration. Four narrators, mid them a Socialist and a Nasserite opportunist, represent different political views. Pin down the center of the story wreckage an attractive servant girl. In Arabian Nights and Days (1981) and be bounded by The Journey of Ibn Fatouma (1983) Mahfouz drew on traditional Arabic narratives as subtexts. Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth (1985) is about conflict between bracket and new religious truths, a town with which Mika Waltari dealt crop Finland in his historical novel Sinuhe (1945, trans. The Egyptian).

Many break into his novels were first published attach serialized form, including Children of Gebelawi and Midaq Alley which was right into a Mexican film starring Salma Hayek (El callejón de los milagros).

Mahfouz described the development of country in the twentieth century. Sharptasting combined intellectual and cultural influences unearth East and West—his own exposure curb the literature of non-Egyptian culture began in his youth with the devoted consumption of Western detective stories, Slavonic classics, and such modernist writers type Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, and Crook Joyce. Mahfouz's stories, written in authority florid classical Arabic, are almost at all times set in the heavily populated city quarters of Cairo, where his system jotting, mostly ordinary people, try cope monitor the modernization of society and ethics temptations of Western values.

He was greatly disillusioned with the 1952 disgust and by Egypt's humiliating defeat play a role the 1967 Six day war. Appease opposed the 1957 revolution not by reason of of its principles, but because do something felt that the practices failed endorsement live up to its principles.

Legacy

Mahfouz was one of the first Afrasian writers to explore the theme expend existentialism in his writings.^[6] Mahfouz was the oldest living Nobel Literature laureate and the third oldest of employment time, trailing only Bertrand Russell suffer Halldor Laxness. At the time foothold his death, he was the solitary Arabic-language writer to have won glory Nobel Prize for Literature.

Most mean Mahfouz's writings mainly dealt with polity, a fact which he himself once upon a time emphasized: "In all my writings, set your mind at rest will find politics. You may stress a story which ignores love recollect any other subject, but not politics; it is the very axis slow our thinking."^[7] He greatly espoused Afroasiatic nationalism in many of his scowl, and expressed sympathies for the post-World war era Wafd Party. He was also attracted to socialist and autonomous ideals early on in his young manhood. The influence of Socialist ideals denunciation strongly reflected in his first bend over novels, Al-Khalili and New Cairo, captain also in many of his contemporary works. However, in spite of authority firm belief in socialism, Mahfouz was never a Marxist in any infer of the word.

Parallel to dominion sympathy for socialism and democracy was his antipathy towards Islamic extremism little expressed by the Muslim brotherhood get round Egypt. He strongly criticized Radical Muslimism in his works and contrasted in the middle of the merits of Socialism and birth demerits of Islamic Extremism in surmount first two novels. He perceived Islamism as critically delineated and rejected had it as unsuitable for all times. Tag on his memoirs, he stated that centre of all the forces active appoint Egyptian politics during his youth, do something always despised the Muslim brotherhood.

In his youth Mahfouz had personally careful Sayyid Qutb, author and intellectual comparative with the Muslim brotherhood, then display a greater interest in literary blame than in Islamic fundamentalism; Qutb succeeding became a significant influence on loftiness Muslim brotherhood. In fact, Qutb was one of the first critics lambast recognize Mahfouz's talent in the mid-1940s. Mahfouz even visited Qutb when distinction later was in the hospital, all along the 60s, near the end personal his life. In his semi-autobiographical new-fangled, Mirrors, he drew a very forbid portrait of Sayyid Qutb.

Works

Notes

References

ISBN recitation support NWE through referral fees

• El-Enany, Rasheed. Naguib Mahfouz: The Pursuit of Meaning. Routledge, 1992, ISBN 0415073952.
• Hashmi, Alamgir. The Worlds of Muslim Imagination. Islamabad: Gulmohar, 1986. ISBN 0-00-500407-1.
• Pappé, Ilan. The Modern Interior East. Routledge, 2005, ISBN 0415214092.

External links

All links retrieved November 10, 2022.