Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz (Arabic: نجيب محفوظ‎ Nagīb Maḥfūẓ AFI: egyptian cinema. In 1988 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Along with his countryman Taha Hussein, Naguib is considered one of the most important exponents of Arab existentialism, and one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature. Known for his narrative, he was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, thus being the first Arabic-language writer to receive this award, and to date the most recognized in this language.

In his lifetime, he published around 34 novels, more than 350 short stories, several movie scripts, several newspaper columns and five plays in an extensive 70-year career. Many of his works (not specifically his scripts) of him have been made into Egyptian and foreign films.

Life and work

Childhood and youth

Naguib Mahfuz was born in Old Cairo on December 11, 1911, in British-occupied Egypt, in the home of a British government official. Nagib grew up in the famous Al-Gamaliyya neighborhood, one of the oldest historical areas of the capital, and was the youngest of eight children.

He stood out from his early youth in literature, and when he was of school age he was fascinated by philosophy, writing several articles on the subject in specialized magazines. Interested in foreign languages, especially English, Naguib set himself the task of translating literary works into his native language, Ancient Egypt being the most popular of the works he translated, in 1932..

Literary beginnings

Naguib dedicated himself to composing works of fiction and published approximately 80 stories by the time he finished high school, this in 1934. Heir to his father's trade, he was working in the Ministry of Religious Affairs of Egypt, between 1939 and 1954. From his post, Nagib cultivated letters more vigorously, giving rise to unfinished works such as The Curse of Ra (1939), Radophis the Courtesan (1943) and The Battle of Thebes (1944).

After World War II ended, Naguib became a social writer and alternated his literary production with the production of film adaptations.

First successes

Mahfouz in the '60s.

Such intense work would have its consequences and rewards: Between 1956 and 1957 his work Cairo Trilogy (made up of the novels Between two Palaces, Palacio del desire and The Sugar Bowl) is positioned as a successful work during a time of great social and political changes that took place in Egypt after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1952. The Egyptian regime publishes serialized in a semi-official newspaper the novel that would appear as a book in Beirut in 1967: Children of our neighborhood. This work is currently banned in your country.

These novels have been analyzed from different linguistic-literary perspectives. Specialist Hanan Saleh Hussein devoted a detailed study to the humorous resources in Naguib Mahfuz's narrative and how humor is created in his narrative by violating conversational maxims, based on the novels of the Trilogy next to Jan Aljalili and The Alley of Miracles.

Consecration

Mahfouz in 1982.

His greatest literary success would come from Europe: the award in 1988 of the Nobel Prize for Literature. This award would promote his worldwide fame and would elevate him to the consideration of "father of Arabic prose".

Among the arguments for receiving the Nobel Prize are recognition of his career as a poet, novelist and columnist. The Swedish Academy recognized the value of his work «Cairo Trilogy», calling it «a demonstration of Arab art, which has universal validity». He is considered by critics the greatest chronicler of modern Egypt.

The award-winning writer Mahfuz published 50 novels in more than half a century, including Stories of our neighborhood, Palace of Desire and The Thief and the dogs.

Last years

The writer's health began to deteriorate after he was attacked in 1994 by Islamic extremists, who inflicted a serious wound on his neck with a knife, considering his work as blasphemy against the Muslim religion. “Naguiz Mafuz was stabbed. Allah continues his divine task ”, this is how Saramago brilliantly summed it up in the entry on October 14 in his “Lanzarote Notebooks ”.

In March 1995, Mohamed Nafi Mustafá and Mohamed Al Mahlaui, the alleged perpetrators of the attack, were hanged in a Cairo prison.

This attack left him with serious consequences that undermined his health, causing damage to his eyesight and hearing, as well as paralysis of his right arm, which prevented him from continuing to write normally. Despite this, after undergoing a long process of physiotherapy, Mahfuz managed to write a series of very short stories, in the style of Japanese haikus, some of which have been published in the Egyptian magazine Misfildunia (Half of the World) under the title of "Dreams of convalescence".

In 1996 he was classified by radical Islamic groups as a "heretic" and sentenced to death. Since then he has remained virtually confined to his home, leaving sporadically and under police protection. Nevertheless, Mahfuz maintained, within his means, an active literary life, participating in meetings in literary centers in Cairo and publishing an interview column every Thursday in the weekly Al-Ahram Weekly in the one that used to address current political and social issues.

Death

On July 19, 2006, at the age of 94, he was admitted to a Cairo hospital for five stitches to his head, after he was injured when he tripped on a rug in his home. Subsequently, he presented several respiratory complications for which he required the assistance of an artificial respirator. On August 23, he underwent another two-and-a-half-hour operation for a colon ulcer that began to bleed. He remained in the hospital until his death on August 30, 2006. Meanwhile, his family denied the information broadcast on television that he was in the United States for treatment of a previous ailment.

Legacy

Since 1996 and annually, the Naguib Mahfuz Medal of Literature is awarded every December 11, the anniversary of the writer's birth. It is an Arabic literature contest for the best contemporary novel written in this language, which does not have a translation into English. The winning book is translated into English and published by the American University in Cairo Press.

The year 2011 was exceptional for the contest due to the Egyptian revolution. The campus of the American University in Cairo was affected operationally and instead of presenting the award, the institution gave the award for "the revolutionary creativity of the Egyptian people during the popular uprising that began on January 25 2011."

Awards

The author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. In 1972 he received the National Prize for Egyptian Letters and with it the highest national honor: the Necklace of the Republic. In 1995, the Mexican director Jorge Fons brought his work El callejón de los milagros to the cinema, although set in Mexico, which received the Goya Award. He was a candidate for the Prince of Asturias Award in 2000.

Work

• La first stage from the beginning of the literary career of Mahfuz to 1944. During this stage, the author publishes fundamentally historical novels set up in Pharaonic Egypt, as well as philosophical and literary articles.

• La Phase II since 1945, with the publication of the novel Jan al-Jalili (مان الخليليuntil 1957. Abandoning the historical theme, the author focuses on contemporary reality. They are novels with names of streets and neighborhoods of Cairo and present the inhabitants of the city, from the most popular classes to the petty bourgeoisie. The most outstanding work of this time is The alley of miracles (زق المدق), published in 1947.

These novels consecrate their author as the best Arab novelist. The third stage will end Trilogy of Cairo of titles Between two Palaces (بين القصرين), Palace of desire (قصر الشوق) and The Azucarera (السكرية), published between 1956 and 1957.

Children of our neighborhood (أولاد حرتنا), although it was published in 1959, it already announced the third phase in the production of Mahfuz. The novel is also set in Cairo even though it is outside the «Realist Pennology» as it is much more spiritual and religious.

• La Phase III ranges from 1961 to 1967. This stage opens with The thief and the dogs (اللص والكلاب). In this literature, the Revolution gradually loses its goals and the novel heroes become solitary and incomprete antiheroes.

• La Fourth stage it is the current of absurdity and covers from 1968 to 1972. at this stage will only write surreal and dream stories. The narrative will disappear to give way to dialogue as a means of communication. At this stage the characters express the atmosphere of general pessimism that lives after the great Arab defeat of 1967 in front of Israel. A work of this stage is The Black Cat Tavern (أسود).

• From 1972 to 1998 Naguib Mahfuz will enter a call 5th stage in which his works will be the fruit of the use of all the literary currents he had experienced so far.

Themes and style

Most of Mahfuz's early works were set in Cairo. Abath Al-Aqdar (Mocking the Fates, 1939), Rhadopis (1943) and Kifah Tibah (The Thebes Struggle, 1944) were historical novels written as part of a larger project of 30 unfulfilled novels. Inspired by Walter Scott (1771-1832), Mahfuz planned to cover the entire history of Egypt in a series of books. However, after the third volume, his interest turned to current issues and scenarios, as well as the psychological impact of social change on ordinary people.

Mahfuz's prose is characterized by the forceful expression of his ideas. His written works cover a wide range of topics, including controversial and taboo ones like socialism, homosexuality, and God. In Egypt it was forbidden to write about some of these topics.

Mahfuz's works often deal with the development of Egypt during the 20th century and combine intellectual and cultural influences from East and West. His own exposure to foreign literature began in his youth with the enthusiastic consumption of Western detective stories, Russian classics, and modernist writers such as Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, and James Joyce. Mahfuz's stories almost always take place in the densely populated urban neighborhoods of Cairo, where his characters, usually ordinary people, try to cope with the modernization of society and the temptations of Western values.

The author's central work in the 1950s was the Cairo Trilogy, which he completed before the July Revolution. The novels were titled Between Two Palaces, Palace of Desire and La Azucarera. Mahfuz sets the story in the parts of Cairo where he grew up. The novels describe the life of patriarch el-Sayyed Ahmed Abdel Gawad and his family for three generations, from World War I until the 1950s, when King Faruq I was overthrown. Mahfuz stopped writing for a few years after finishing the trilogy.

Disappointed by the Nasser regime, which had overthrown the monarchy in 1952, he began publishing again in 1959, now pouring out prolifically novels, short stories, journalism, memoirs, essays, and screenplays. He stated in a 1998 interview that & #34;for a long time he felt that Nasser was one of the most important political leaders in modern history. I only began to fully appreciate him after he nationalized the Suez Canal.” His nonfiction, including his journalism, essays, and his writings on literature and philosophy, have been published in four volumes as of 2016.

Political influence

Most of Mahfuz's writings deal primarily with politics, a fact he acknowledged: "In all my writings, you will find politics. You can find a story that ignores love or any other subject, but not politics; it is the very axis of our thought".

He embraced Egyptian nationalism in many of his works and expressed sympathies for the Wafd party of the post-World War era. He was also drawn to socialist and democratic ideals early in his youth. The influence of socialist ideals is strongly reflected in his first two novels, Al-Khalili and New Cairo , as well as in many of his later works. Parallel to his sympathy for socialism and democracy was his antipathy to Islamic extremism.

In his youth, Mahfuz had met Sayyid Qutb personally when the latter was more interested in literary criticism than in Islamic fundamentalism; Qutb later became a significant influence in the Muslim Brotherhood. In the mid-1940s, Qutb was one of the first critics to recognize Mahfuz's talent, and in the 1960s, near the end of Qutb's life, Mahfuz even visited him in hospital. But later, in the semi-autobiographical novel Mirrors, Mahfuz drew a negative portrait of Qutb. He was disillusioned with the 1952 revolution and with Egypt's defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War. He had supported the principles of the revolution, but became disillusioned, saying the practices did not live up to the original ideals.. Mahfuz's writings influenced a new generation of Egyptian lawyers, including Nabil Mounir and Reda Aslan.

Works of the author translated into Spanish

• The Curse of Ra (1939) (Keops and the Great Pyramid), Egyptian Trilogy 1, historical novel
• Rhadopis (1943) (An Ancient Egyptian courtier) Egyptian Trilogy 2, historical novel.
• The Battle of Thebes (1944), Egyptian Trilogy 3, historical novel.
• New Cairo (1945), novel.
• The alley of miracles (1947), novel.
• The mirage (1948), novel.
• Principle and end (1949), novel.
• Between two Palaces (1956), Trilogy of Cairo 1, novel.
• Palace of desire (1957), Trilogy of Cairo 2, novel.
• The Azucarera (1957), Trilogy of Cairo 3, novel.
• Children of our neighborhood (1959), novel.
• The thief and the dogs (1961), novel.
• The quails and autumn (1962), novel.
• The absence (1964), novel.
• The beggar (1965), short novel.
• Nile Speeds (1966), novel.
• The desired wife, novel.
• Ecos from Egypt. Passages of a lifeMemories.
• Wedding celebrations. novel.
• The nights of the thousand and one night, novel.
• Mirrors, novel.
• Miramar, novel
• Jan Aljali, novel.
• Café KarnakShort novel.
• The coffee of Qushtumar, novel.
• Love in the rain, novel.
• Morning and afternoon chats, novel.
• The pathMartinez Roca.
• Voices of another world, historical tales
• After jealousy, novel.
• Dialogs of evening, novel
• The seventh heaven, stories.
• The epic of harafish, novel.
• Stories of our neighborhood (1975), stories.
• Akhenaten: the king heretic (1985), historical novel.
• The day they killed the leader (1985), novel
• The Black Cat Tavern, stories.
• Morning of roses, stories.

Untranslated works

• Faced with the throne (1983), novel
• Love at the foot of the pyramids, stories
• I've seen in my dream, stories
• Secret organization, stories
• Satan warned, stories

Bibliography in Spanish about Mahfuz

• Nadine Gordimer, "The dialogue at sunset," prefaced Ecos of Egypt, Barcelona, Martínez Roca, 1997.
• Nuria Nuin and Ma Luisa Prieto, "Introduction" to Mirrors, Madrid, Chair, 1999, pp. 7-120.
• Marcelino Villegas, Naguib Mahfuz’s narrative: synthesis essay, Alicante, University of Alicante, 1991. ISBN 84-7908-013-2
• Ma Dolores López Enamorado, Analysis of temporality in the Trilogy of Nayib Mahfuz, Seville, Alfar-Ixbilia, 1998. ISBN 84-7898-136-5
• Ma Dolores López Enamorado, Contemporary Egypt of Nayib Mahfuz: History in the Trilogy, Seville, Alfar-Ixbilia, 1999. ISBN 84-7898-159-

Influence on Egyptian filmography

One of the fundamental facets of Mahfuz's work is the varied relationship with Egyptian cinema over a quarter of a century. In fact, Mahfuz is, despite not being a filmmaker in the strict sense, one of the great indirect architects of the renaissance of Egyptian cinematography in the fifties and sixties, with the hitherto uncultivated style of social realism. The precedent is the well-known The Will (1939), by Kamal Selim, a true turn in the trajectory of Egyptian cinema for the realistic description of life in the poor neighborhoods of Cairo. However, the legacy of this would not arrive until the medium term, since from the Misr or Gizah Studios some filmmakers such as Fatin Abdel Wahab, Ahmed Badrakhan or Henry Barakat continued to flood the internal market (and, in fact, that of the whole world). Arabic) with fiction films, developing a cinema inspired by the one made in Hollywood. The irruption of Salah Abu Seif, Youssef Chahine and Tewfiq Saleh on the scene of the fifties significantly modified the filmography, and endowed his country with a mature and rigorous cinema, above all socially committed, and close to a reality traditionally denied in the screen.

Collaborations

With Youssef Chahine

Mahfuz's real importance to Egyptian cinema lies, however, in his collaboration with Youssef Chahine and Salah Abu Seif. For the first, he wrote the script for three films, very different from each other, which are not the author's best, but are significant from the point of view of the development of modern Egyptian cinema, and are witnesses of the attitude of its artists and intellectuals. before the recent history of the country. The first of these collaborations was Jamila (1958), an exaltation of the Algerian independence process through the figure of the resistant Jamila Bouhired. It represents a certain progressive spirit that would be characteristic of the Arab cinema of the sixties (largely, as a result of the Algerian revolution itself).

The second collaboration with Chahine is a historical film, Saladin the Victorious (1963), a recreation of the exploits of the great Arab warlord, as well as an attempt to rewrite the history of the crusades from the eastern point of view. The perspective changed completely in The Election (1970), a film made after the 1967 defeat, in which Mahfuz and Chahine offer a rather cryptic parable about the "ambiguous role of the intellectuals in Egyptian society".

With Salah Abu Seif

Mahfuz collaborated with Salah Abu Seif on a dozen films. Both born in the popular neighborhoods of Cairo (Mahfuz in Gamal; Abu Seif in Bulaq), practically the same age (the novelist is three years older than the filmmaker), sympathizers of the Egyptian left (Mahfuz, then socialist; Abu Seif, from the Communist Party), began in 1948 with The Adventures of Antar and Abla (an impersonal film about the legendary love affairs of a slave and a lord's daughter in pre-Islamic Arabia, which was, however, a great success). Mahfuz had just abandoned his cycle of pharaonic novels to start in realist literature, like Abu Seif (an experienced editor who had received additional training in Italy in the midst of neorealist fever), who had only two films on his record (one of these a new version of Waterloo Bridge, by Mervyn LeRoy). Both were in a period of maturation.

After this first film experience by Mahfuz, the next installments of the tandem were Your day will come (1952), a Cairo adaptation of Thérèse Raquin, by Émile Zola (which Abu Seif would return to, now without Mahfuz, in 1960 with The splendor of love) and Raya and Sakina (1953), inspired by the real case of two murderers of rich ladies in Alexandria of the twenties. After this apprenticeship, the collaboration would bear its best fruits, and they were the greatest exponents of realism in the fifties, clearly influenced by Mahfuz, with titles such as The Monster (1954), a story Set in the underworld of a Nile village during the British occupation.

Predecessor: Joseph Brodsky

Nobel Prize in Literature 1988

Successor: Camilo José Cela