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Wednesday, 30 Aug 2006
94 years old Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz died today in a Hospital after being admitted there for the best part of a month, recovering from injuries he sustained from falling in his home and injuring his head. He is the first arab writer to ever win a Nobel Prize, and even that has cost him dearly: The Novel he won the Nobel prize for was the main cause for the asassination attempt he sufferd in the 90's on the hands of a islamic militant.
In 1994, an attacker inspired by a militant cleric's ruling that a
Mahfouz novel written decades before was blasphemous stabbed the
then-82-year-old author as he left his Cairo home.Mahfouz survived, but the attack damaged nerves leading to his right
arm, seriously impairing his ability to write. A man who had once
worked for hours at a time — writing in longhand — found it a struggle
to "form legible words running in more or less straight lines," he
wrote in the aftermath.
To add insult to injury, that same novel was banned in Egypt till this day by the religious authorities, because of its "blasphemous undertones" according to them, and it continues to be banned till this day. Such a ban never stopped Egypt from boasting about his Nobel leaurete status, but at the same time never did him right by lifting the ban on his Novel. The man died seeing his best work respected and praised worldwide, but only availble in his own country in the black market, making it one of the greatest acts of injustice that a writer of his caliber ever had to suffer.
Oh well…
RIP Mr. Mahfouz.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:00 am
RIP indeed. I loved his work. Didn’t know it was banned in Egypt though. One would figure any country would be proud of such a writer.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:01 am
Very sad. I read the Cairo Trilogy a couple of years back, couldn’t put it/them down. What’s the book that got banned?
August 30th, 2006 at 9:13 am
Wow. God bless him. I also didn’t know he was banned in Egypt. Which one? Palace Walk?
August 30th, 2006 at 9:32 am
The book that was banned was Awlad Haretna (Children of The Alley). It’s the one he got stabbed for by extremists.
The book is here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385264739/103-5483790-1101449?v=glance&n=283155
August 30th, 2006 at 10:17 am
What a shame! I’m at least glad he lived to 94. I’m sorry to see that he didn’t live to see the stupid ban overturned, though.
I have been meaning to read the Cairo Trilogy, but I can only find one of the books in the series at a local library, the third in the series, Sugar Street, so I’ve been holding off until I can start at the beginning. Supposedly, the library has the other books available, but they are checked out every time I go there. I really should put in a request to hold the other two books next time they are returned. Can anyone give me a little information about the series? Like what book in the trilogy is best and is it really best to start at the beginning or is it safe to dig in somewhere else.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:27 am
If a book doesn’t offend Islamic clerics, it isn’t worth reading.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:53 am
tommy, you should definitely start at the beginning. It probably is possible to read Sugar Street first but it would be like watching The Godfather Part 3 first.
August 30th, 2006 at 11:00 am
Naguib Mahfouz Has Died
I highly recommend that you read them all, but I think my personal preference would be to read The Harafish and Children of the Alley first - no particular reason here other than simple personal preference.
August 30th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Naguib Mahfouz Has Died
He is the author of no fewer than thirty novels, more than a hundred short stories, and more than two hundred articles. Half of his novels have been made into films.
August 30th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Allah Yirhamu
August 30th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
Don Cox, if you don’t have an iota of human decencey, you don’t have to be so proud about it by flaunting it, a thousand of you aren’t even close to a finger of Nageeb Mahfouz, true highlander, allah yir7amo.
August 30th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
Everytime I went to Groppi in Heliopolis, Cairo for sweets with my mom, she will point to me and say ” D. this is Naguib Mahfouz”, we owned most of his books, a slim, handsome guy with funny glasses sitting peacefully sipping his coffee in the open air and writing or reading. I would try to peak at him as a kid just to get a smile, and he never turned me down, It was like a tradition to see him there whenever we went in the morning, 9 a.m. every morning he was there.
The vivid memories of my fav. dates covered with chocolate from Groppi and Naguib Mahfouz is not easy to be forgotten.
RIP Naguib Mahfouz, we love you and we will miss you.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
May Allah bless his soul
August 31st, 2006 at 6:27 am
Why do they do this to our intellectuals?!
Dr Nawal Al Sadawee had to flee Egypt because she is on the list that those terrorists threaten to assasinate just for her brave writings!
Here is her official website:
http://www.nawalsaadawi.net
August 31st, 2006 at 7:14 am
[...] But even without having read the books, I can appreciate what an important man Mahfouz was, and what a loss his death this week is to Egypt. At 94, he was of course entitled to go, but he leaves a country that seems so much less ambitious in the areas of literature, creativity, and influence in critical thinking than one would wish for his legacy. He was known as a cosmopolitan and a big thinker, yet also as enormously connected to Egypt’s vast swaths of festering riff-raff. In later years, his genius was perceived as as much as a threat as a national treasure — in 1989, he had the nerve to defend Salman Rushdie (that year’s equivalent to our recent cartoon crisis), and in 1994, he was nearly killed by a knife-wielding Islamic Militant. Although Hosni Mubarak said nice things about him yesterday, I have never had much of a sense of his belovedness from anyone other than local progressives and outsiders. One of my favorite scenes in Paul Theuroux’s Cairo to Capetown book was an evening spent at a swarming nightclub among a crowd of self-professed intellectuals, where only the few words of Mahfouz, who otherwise just sat there with a bemused look on his face, dangling his ever-present cigarette, had any resonance at all. [...]
August 31st, 2006 at 7:14 am
[...] But even without having read the books, I can appreciate what an important man Mahfouz was, and what a loss his death this week is to Egypt. At 94, he was of course entitled to go, but he leaves a country that seems so much less ambitious in the areas of literature, creativity, and influence in critical thinking than one would wish for his legacy. He was known as a cosmopolitan and a big thinker, yet also as enormously connected to Egypt’s vast swaths of festering riff-raff. In later years, his genius was perceived as as much as a threat as a national treasure — in 1989, he had the nerve to defend Salman Rushdie (that year’s equivalent to our recent cartoon crisis), and in 1994, he was nearly killed by a knife-wielding Islamic Militant. Although Hosni Mubarak said nice things about him yesterday, I have never had much of a sense of his belovedness from anyone other than local progressives and outsiders. One of my favorite scenes in Paul Theuroux’s Cairo to Capetown book was an evening spent at a swarming nightclub among a crowd of self-professed intellectuals, where only the few words of Mahfouz, who otherwise just sat there with a bemused look on his face, dangling his ever-present cigarette, had any resonance at all. [...]
August 31st, 2006 at 11:00 pm
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May 27th, 2008 at 6:54 am
the way i discover this writer was very unusual. I bought his books in a church in England for very little money. something like 1 pound for five books. i am in korea now and i could not part from them. actually i am reading Miramar.. he describes his period in a quite realistic way. in some ways it is very nostalgic.. he talks about the end of an era… he describes beauty …or once beauty.. the once luxurious hotel is just a memory… it reminded me of a great italian film director Luchino Visconti or writers such as Thomas Mann.
Yes his stories are like a sun set by the sea!