The place of Naguib Mahfouz in contemporary Middle Eastern history and culture is colossal; there is truly no way to assess how many people he has touched, so profound it is. There has not been a single figure in the past century that has had the massive impact on the world of Arabic letters as Mahfouz has. His many novels and short story collections represent a significant memory and recording of modern Arabic literature.

Naguib Mahfouz’s literature reveals an artistic expression in many different dimensions of Egyptian identity specifically Cairene culture, history, and ordinary life. Mahfouz is to Islam, Egypt, and Arab literature a writer who encapsulates the array of differing periods of transition in Egypt but maintains a keen sense of existential and spiritual quests. To see his works as mainly political fables or allegories are false. It is most misleading simplification, since there are many levels of interpretation and reception. His novels and short stories are a work of art. They picture Egyptian milieus from the most ancient times to contemporary everyday life, deal with questions of broad human concern, raise philosophical and existential questions.

Mahfouz has left an indelible mark on global literature that has impregnated the world with the novelty of the Arab novel and culture through translations and cinema but more importantly the art of picturing Egyptians living ordinary lives in different time periods of historical Egypt. Mahfouz has pioneered the Arab novel not only through his fame and recognition because of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988 but the local recognition he has received by Muslim and non-Muslim literary, historical and religious writers.

Many scholars of Mahfouz have analyzed his literature in terms of literary themes that are centered on society, morals, and politics. He is equally important in demonstrating a new vehicle of expression for Muslims, instrumental in creating an Islamic model of narrative. Anyone can read his novels (in multiple languages), and glean a certain sensibility of eastern/western understanding of the world within a singular Cairene culture. It is noteworthy that when Mahfouz turns to social issues whether corruption, disintegration, poverty and desperation, he is simultaneously expressing an earlier belief in fate, destination, dispensation or providence. People in his novels are often, like reeds in the wind, almost powerless in the face of circumstance and chance. This only empowers his characters and gives the reader a chance to interpret and come up with one’s own conclusions and answers for both social responsibility and religious belief.

I wrote my dissertation on Naguib Mahfouz and I had hoped to meet him some day on a journey to Cairo, Egypt. That dream has now faded with his passing away. At times, I felt that I was even living with a strange man, and at times he was so close to the bone. Mornings and evenings with him in my garage, walking through Egyptian history from 1900's to the present and at times frolicking with religious characters and Pharoanic figures. What a colorful bouquet of writing!

Mahfouz to me was a writer whom I could rely upon as a Muslim and I felt that he would perhaps smile at me some day comforted by the thought that I was deeply in awe of his writing, thinking, ideology, Islam, and identity. But more importantly, he would smile at me because he and I had one thing in common: Islam and Modernity. We relied on Islam and the world around us to cause change in the extremism, corruption, and superficiality of western ideals in our respective countries. Mahfouz never left his homeland but his writing exuded a flavor that impressed upon the reader a well traveled man through his vivid descriptions of dreams, journeys, idealistic visions, and family dramas.

His romantic depictions of relationships illicit and licit revealed the multiple amorous circles of characters that represented Muslim Egyptian culture and simultaneously a humanness and acceptance of humanity's failure and its celebration of complexity. I will miss him deeply and encourage all of you to read his work if you have not done so...I am teaching one his novels at Antioch University and my students just informed me how much they enjoyed his writing and style. I have taught his books for some time now, and he has been received very well by all students.

Naguib Mahfouz skillfully wove a mosaic of Egyptian life that can be compared to Dickens' portrayals of 19th century England, John Steinbeck's representations of 20th century America, Robert Musil's ambiance of 20th century Germany. One can even compare his portrayal of time and vitality of life to Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and Henri Bergson's Mind and Matter. His novels are indispensable signposts to a world that many of us desperately need to both understand and to reclaim as human. What this means is that Muslims and non-Muslims can delve into his writing and fully grasp the intimate and alien nuances of modern Muslim culture. The death of Mahfouz marks the end of an era, the slow death of the values of Arab liberalism and egalitarianism that were so much a part of each of his books. Bravo! Mabrook Mahfouz! I feel sad and know that he is irreplaceable although he has gifted us with his crafted literature and care of humanity as an Egyptian Muslim.
Sad to lose him but inspired by his gift to all of us and our lives: his work!


Professor Mehnaz M. Afridi teaches Judaism and Islam at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Originally from Pakistan, raised in Europe and the Middle East, she brings a multicultural perspective to Islam. Her deep interest in Judaism and Modern Jewish Diaspora has led her to numerous exciting interfaith conferences, invitations by non-Muslims to expound on the intellectual and theological similarities between Jews and Muslims. Her recent research projects are focused in Italy, Muslims and Jews in Italian culture; she taught in Rome and recently received a grant from the National Endowment of Humanities to attend a seminar in Venice, Italy.