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| The Mahfouz Dialogs
ISBN: 9781617972324
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / American University in Cairo Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Arabic literature -- History and criticism; Mahfouz Naguib 1911–2006;
The Mahfouz Dialogs records the memories, views, and jokes of Naguib Mahfouz on subjects ranging from politics to the relationship between his novels and his life, as delivered to intimate friends at a series of informal meetings stretching out over almost half a century. Mahfouz was a pivotal figure not only in world literature (through being awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1988 he became the first writer in Arabic to win a mass audience), but also in his own society, where he vastly enhanced the image of the writer in the eyes of the public and encapsulated as the victim of a savage attack on his life by an Islamist in 1994 the struggle between pluralism, tolerance, and secularism on the one hand and extremist Islam. Moderated by Gamal al-Ghitani, a writer of a younger generation who shared a common background with Mahfouz (al-Ghitani also grew up in medieval Cairo) and felt a vast personal empathy for the writer despite their sometimes different views, these exchanges throw new light on Mahfouz's life, the creation of his novels, and literary Egypt in the second half of the twentieth century.
Gamal al-Ghitani was born in Guhayna, Egypt on May 9, 1945. He apprenticed to a carpet maker and studied Oriental carpet design at the College of Arts and Crafts. In 1969, he joined the staff of the newspaper Akhbar al-Youm and was a correspondent during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. In 1993, he founded Akhbar al-Adab, a leading literary magazine, and was its editor until 2011. He wrote several novels including The Zafarani Files, Pyramid Texts, The Book of Epiphanies, and The Book of Revelations. He also published The Mahfouz Dialogs, a collection of recorded conversations that the novelist Naguib Mahfouz had with friends over a half-century. In 2015, he received the Nile Award, Egypt's top literary state honor. He also received the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Egyptian National Prize for Literature, and the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for his novel Ren. He died as a result of heart and respiratory problems on October 18, 2015 at the age of 70. (Bowker Author Biography) |
