Naguib Mahfouz was born in Cairo in 1911 in the family of an official, studied philosophy and literature at Cairo University. In 1934 he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at Cairo University.
He worked as a civil servant until 1972, first in the Ministry of Mortmain Endowments, then as director of censorship at the Bureau of Arts, director of the Cinema Support Fund, and finally as a cultural consultant at the Ministry of Culture.
Naguib Mahfouz was a liberal author by Egyptian standards, and his books were disliked by Islamists. In 1994, the writer was attacked with a knife by a fanatic and seriously wounded. After this incident, Mahfouz’s health deteriorated, but he continued to write. In July 2006, Mahfouz was hospitalized and never left the hospital until the day of his death.
Naguib Mahfouz’s first works, which portray traditional national values in a realistic way, were published in the magazine Al-Majallah Al-Jadida by its editor, the well-known Egyptian journalist Salama Moussa. Moussa influenced the young Mahfouz, and when he began writing, he said, “You have potential, but you haven’t developed it yet.”
His first collection of short stories (“A Whiff of Madness”) was published in 1938. It was followed by a series of historical novels written in a romantic manner and devoted to the times of the Pharaohs.
Mahfouz’s prose gained European recognition in the late 1950s with the publication of his “Cairo Trilogy” (“Bein al-Kasrain”, “Qasr al-Shawk” and “al-Sukkariyya”). Describing the lives of three generations of a Cairo family, the author depicts social and political events in Egyptian history.
In the 1960s there are changes in Mahfouz’s work. He gravitates towards small forms (short stories) and leaves more space for the symbol. The sense of constant anxiety and suffering caused by the evolution of society, where man feels increasingly lonely and abandoned, resounds in such works: “The Thief and the Dog” (1961), “The Light of God” (1963), “Quail and Autumn” (1964), “The Way” (1964), “The Poor Man” (1965), “Chatter Over the Nile” (1966), “The Black Cat Tavern” (1968), and “The Honeymoon” (1971).
In total, Mahfouz wrote about five dozen novels and novellas, more than a hundred short stories.
More than half of his novels have been screened. The films are popular in the Arab world. He has a lifetime bronze monument in the Muhandisin neighborhood of Cairo.