Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz (Arabic: نجيب محفوظ‎ Nagīb Maḥfūẓ, IPA: [næˈɡiːb mɑħˈfuːzˤ]; December 11, 1911 – August 30, 2006) was an Egyptian writer, who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Quotes

 * Voices were blended and intermingled in a tumultuous swirl around which eddied laughter, shouts, the squeaking of doors and windows, piano and accordion music, rollicking handclaps, a policeman's bark, braying, grunts, coughs of hashish addicts and screams of drunkards, anonymous calls for help, raps of a stick, and singing by individuals and groups.
 * Mahfouz (1957) Palace of Desire Part II; Cited in Matt Schudel "Leading Arab Novelist Gave Streets a Voice" in: Washington Post, August 31, 2006
 * You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
 * Cited in: Michael J. Gelb (1996) Thinking for a change: discovering the power to create, communicate and lead. p. 96


 * God did not intend religion to be an exercise club.
 * Attributed to Naguib Mahfouz in: Thorntize (2009) The Handbook of Wisdom and Delight. p. 121


 * According to Islamic principles, when a man is accused of heresy, he is given the choice between repentance and punishment.
 * Naguib Mahfouz in: Gary Dexter (2010) Poisoned Pens: Literary Invective Form Amis to Zola. p. 226


 * It was amazing that in this country where people allowed emotion to guide their politics they approached love with the precision of accountants.
 * Mahfouz (1957) Sugar Street


 * It is something worth picking from the thrash-can the alluring experience of the working days.
 * Quoted in: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad (2010). Northern women development. [Nigeria]. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657.

About Naguib Mahfouz

 * He has this style that goes very quickly through generations, giving little cameo portraits of people and sort of bringing it all together in a very exciting way.
 * Rosario Ferré interview in Backtalk: Women Writers Speak Out by Donna Marie Perry (1993)


 * [Mahfouz's fiction allowed readers the] rare privilege of entering a national psychology, in a way that thousands of journalistic articles or television documentaries could not achieve.
 * John Fowles as cited in Matt Schudel "Leading Arab Novelist Gave Streets a Voice" in: Washington Post, August 31, 2006


 * Naguib Mahfouz, an Egyptian novelist who was the first Arabic writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature and who was often considered the greatest writer in the Arab world... lived his entire life in Cairo, which provided the inspiration and backdrop for almost all of his writing... He set most of his works in the ancient Islamic quarter of Cairo, with its mosques and serpentine alleys teeming with shopkeepers, metalsmiths, government workers, peasants, prostitutes and thieves. His vibrant novels portraying life at every level of society were often likened to those of such other writers of urban social realism as Charles Dickens, Honore de Balzac and Emile Zola.
 * Matt Schudel "Leading Arab Novelist Gave Streets a Voice" in: Washington Post, August 31, 2006