Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz was born in Cairo in 1911 and grew up in a middle-class family. He studied philosophy at Cairo University and worked as a civil servant for most of his life. He began writing at an early age and published his first novel in 1939. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers in modern Arabic literature and the first to use the novel form to explore the social and political issues of his time. He is best known for his Cairo Trilogy, a family saga that spans three generations from the end of World War I to the 1952 Egyptian Revolution. He also wrote novels set in ancient Egypt, historical fiction, allegorical stories, and realistic portrayals of contemporary life. He was a prolific writer who produced more than 40 novels and short stories, as well as screenplays and essays. He received many awards and honors, including the Egyptian State Prize, the Order of the Nile, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. He was the first and only Arab writer to receive the Nobel Prize until 2006, when he died at the age of 94. He was stabbed in the neck by a religious extremist in 1994, which affected his health and ability to write. He is widely admired and respected by readers and writers around the world, and his works have been translated into many languages. He is considered a master of the Arabic language and a pioneer of modern literature.