Mahfouz, Naguib
Mahfouz, Naguib ( 1911 – 2006 ),Egyptian novelist, born in Cairo, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1988 . He wrote many novels in several genres—historical, realist, and experimental—but is best known internationally for the ‘Cairo trilogy’, which manifests admiration for the tradition of Tolstoy , Balzac , and Zola . It consists of Palace Walk ( 1956 ), Palace of Desire ( 1957 ), and Sugar Street ( 1957 ) and traces with a broad humane sympathy the fate of the Al Jawad family over three generations, and its many connections and ramifications: the books present a portrait of a city, particularly of its old quarter, of a nation's changing identity, and of many individuals (both men and women) caught in the web of history, between tradition and modernity, religion and national politics, repression and a yearning for self-fulfilment. Dominant among the characters is...
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