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With
dozens of novels to his name, collections
of short stories, fully-fledged studies of
his work in book form, an increasing
number of doctoral theses, and an enormous
number of articles in literary and
academic periodicals (in English and other
languages), Naguib Mahfouz can rightfully
claim the title of the best-known and most
studied Arab novelist in the Anglophone
world. This is hardly surprising, as
Mahfouz enjoys a similar status in his own
language, in which he has been by far one
of most popular serious novelists, all his
novels having seen several reprints in
different editions.
His
Background
Born in 1911, Mahfouz is the grand old man
of Arabic fiction, enjoying the affection
and reverence of both critics and a vast
readership.
He published his first novel in 1939 and
since that date has written thirty-two
novels and thirteen collections of short
stories. In his old age he has maintained
his prolific output, producing a novel
every year.
The novel genre, which can be traced back
to the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries in Europe, has no prototypes in
classical Arabic literature. Although this
abounded in all kinds of narrative, none
of them could be described as we
understand the term "novel"
today. Arab scholars usually attribute the
first serious attempt at writing a novel
in Arabic to the Egyptian author Muhammad
Hussein Haykal. The novel, called "Zaynab"
after the name of its heroine, and
published in 1913, told in highly
romanticized terms the story of a peasant
girl, victim of social conventions. Soon
after, writers like Taha Hussein, Abbas
Al-Aqqad, Ibrahim Al-Mazini and Tawfiq Al-Hakim
were to venture into the unknown realm of
fiction.
Waiting
for his Advent
The Arabic
novel, however, was to wait for another
generation for the advent of the man who
was to make it his sole mission. Naguib,
who was born to a middle-class family in
one of the oldest quarters in Cairo, was
to give expression in powerful metaphors,
over a period of half a century, to the
hopes and frustrations of his nation.
Readers have so often identified
themselves with his work, a great deal of
which has been adapted for the cinema,
theater and television, that many of his
characters become household names in Egypt
and elsewhere in the Arab world. On the
other hand, his work, though deeply
steeped in local reality, appeals to that
which is universal and permanent in human
nature, as shown by the relatively good
reception his fiction has met in other
cultures. In English and other languages,
since the appearance in 1966 of his first
translated novel Midag Alley, he has been
widely read.
Phases
of Action
A study of
Mahfouz's output shows his fiction to have
passed through 4 distinguishable stages.
The first (1939-44) comprises three novels
based on the history of ancient Egypt.
They provide a useful insight into the
germination of the then budding young
talent. Admittedly written under the
influence of Sir Walter Scott's historical
romances, the last of the three, "The
Struggle of Thebes", is particularly
interesting for the way in which the
novelist brought history to bear on the
political scene at the time.
The novel draws on the heroic struggle of
the Egyptians and their patriotic Pharaohs
to expel the Hyksos, as foreign ruling
invaders, from their country. The novel
bore a relevance to Egyptian
sociopolitical reality at the time
(British occupation and a ruling
aristocracy of foreign stock) that was all
too obvious to be missed.
Mahfouz
had meant to write a whole series of
novels encompassing the full history of
Pharaonic Egypt; he even did the research
required for such a monumental task. In
the event, and perhaps luckily for the
development of the Arabic novel, he was
voluntarily deflected from his intended
course and the scene of his next novel,
"A New Cairo" (1945), was placed
in the raw reality of its day. This marks
the beginning of the second stage in the
novelist's career, which culminated in the
publication in 1956-57 of his magnum opus,
"The Cairo Trilogy". The novels
of this phase include six titles, of which
three are English translation, i.e. "Midag
Alley", "The Beginning",
and "The End", and Volume 1 of
the Cairo Trilogy ("Palace
Walk"). In this period of his
writing, the novelist studied the
sociopolitical ills of his society with
the full analytical power afforded him by
the best techniques of realism and
naturalism. What emerges from the sum
total of these novels is a very bleak
picture of a cross section of Egyptian
urban society in the twenty or so years
between the two World Wars. A work which
stands by itself in this phase is
"The Mirage" (1948), in which
Mahfouz experimented for the first and
last time with writing a novel closely
based on Freud's theory of
psycho-analysis. For his Trilogy, the peak
of his realist/ naturalist phase, the
Egyptian people will forever stand in
their great novelist’s debt. For without
this colossal saga novel, in which he
gives an eyewitness account of the
country's political, social, religious and
intellectual life between the two wars,
that period of turmoil in their nation's
life would have passed undocumented.
After
writing the Trilogy, which met with
instant wide acclaim and served to focus
renewed attention on his previous work,
Mahfouz fell uncharacteristically silent
for a number of years (1952-59) - the
Trilogy having been completed four years
before its publication.
Different
theories exist as to why this happened.
One theory held by Ghaly Shukri, a
well-known Mahfouz scholar, is that by
writing the Trilogy Mahfouz had brought
the realistic technique to a point of
perfection which he could not possibly
surpass. He thus needed a period of
incubation in which to look for a new
style. Whatever the reason, when Mahfouz
serialized his next novel in the Cairo
daily Al-Ahram in 1959, his readers were
in for a surprise. The people of "Our
Quarter" (available in English) as
children of Gebe-lawi, was a unique
allegory of human history from beginning
to the present day.
"The
Thief and the Dogs" (available in
English), published in 1982, is in a way
like switching from a Dickens or a Balzac
to a Graham Greene or a William Golding,
so radical was the change that this style
underwent in the third stage of his
development. No longer viewing the world
through realist/naturalist eyes, he was
now to write a series of short powerful
novels at once social and existential in
their concern. Rather than presenting a
full colorful picture of the society, he
now concentrated on the inner working of
the individual's mind in its interaction
with the social environment. In this phase
his style ranges from the impressionistic
to the surrealist, a pattern of evocative
vocabulary and imagery binds the work
together, an extensive use is made of the
stream of consciousness, or to use a more
accurate term in the case of Mahfouz, free
indirect speech. On the other hand, while
the situation is based on reality, it is
often given a universal significance
through the suggestion of a higher level
of meaning.
Just as
his realistic novels were an indictment of
the social conditions prevailing in Egypt
before 1952, the novels of the sixties
contained much that was overtly critical
of that period. In the years following
1967, his writing ranged from surrealist,
almost absurd short stories and dry,
abstract, unactable playlets, to novels of
direct social and political commentary.
Mahfouz himself was aware of the new turn
his work had taken. In the mid-seventies
we find Mahfouz again searching for a new
style. It would appear that, having been
diverted by national traumatic events from
the course he had embarked on in the early
sixties, he was no longer able to return
to it. Or it may be that in his old age,
with a life's experience behind him, he
felt at last that he could Arabicize the
art of the novel. For it is since then
that we observe the sporadic emergence of
a number of novels which justify the
proposition of a fourth stage in his
literary development(which has yet to be
studied). What is remarkable about the
novels of this stage, of which we can
count five, is their departure from the
norms of novel writing as they evolved in
Europe over the last two centuries; these
are the norms which conceive of the novel
as a work of indivisible unity which
proceeds logically from a beginning to a
middle to an end. But Mahfouz no longer
wants any of that. He now harks back to
the indigenous narrative arts of Arabic
literature, particularly as found in the
Arabian Nights and other folk narratives
in which Arabic literature abounds. While
any talk of an organic unity in these
works is precluded, the presence of what
may be called, for the lack of a better
term, a cumulative unity producing a total
effect of sorts, is undeniable. It is this
form that Mahfouz has been experimenting
with for the last ten years or so in
novels like The Epic of the
Riff-Raff", "The Nights of
"The Thousand and One Nights"
and others. In his evocation of both the
form and the content of these classical
Arabic narrative types, and his
utilization of them to pass judgment of
the human condition past and present,
Mahfouz appears to open endless vistas for
the young Arab novelist to find a distinct
voice of his own.
Views
of life
Although
Mahfouz's novelistic technique has passed,
as we have seen, through recognizable
stages, one cannot say the same about his
world view, the main features of which can
be traced back to his earliest works.
Mahfouz appears indeed to have sorted out
the main questions about life at an early
juncture of his youth and to have held on
the answers he arrived at ever since, age
and experience serving only to deepen and
broaden but hardly to modify them.
A
sociopolitical view of man's existence is
at the very root of almost everything that
Mahfouz has written. Even in a novel with
a strong metaphysical purport like
"Al-Tariq" (The Way), the social
message is aptly woven into the texture of
the work: man is not meant to spend his
life on Earth in a futile search and his
only true hope of salvation is the
exertion of a positive and responsible
effort to better his lot and that of
others.
That
Mahfouz has always been a socially
committed writer with a deep concern for
the problem of social injustice is an
incontestable fact. To him individual
morality is inseparable from social
morality. In other words, according to
Mahfouz's moral code, those who only seek
their own individual salvation are damned;
to him nirvana is, as it were, a
distinctly collective state. On the other
hand, characters who are saved in
Mahfouz's work are only those with
altruistic motives, those who show concern
for others and demonstrate a kind of
awareness of their particular predicament
being part of a more general one.
How
he Pictures the World
The
picture of the world as it emerges from
the bulk of Mahfouz's work is very gloomy
indeed, though not completely despondent.
It shows that the author's social utopia
is far from being realized. Mahfouz seems
to conceive of time as a metaphysical
force of oppression. His novels have
consistently shown time as the bringer of
change, and change as a very painful
process, and very often time is not
content until it has dealt his heroes the
final blow of death. To sum up, in
Mahfouz's dark tapestry of the world there
are only two bright spots. These consists
of man's continuing struggle for equality
on the one hand and the promise of
scientific progress on the other;
meanwhile, life is a tragedy.
Mahfouz creates an intricate pattern of
verbal irony which he weaves into the very
texture of the novel and maintains
throughout.
This pattern of verbal irony engenders in
the reader an awareness of the incongruity
between the object and mode of expression,
i.e. the realistic situation and the
hyperbolic terms in which it is rendered.
This awareness creates and sustains, all
the way through, a sense of dramatic irony
where the reader is, as it were, cognizant
of a basic fact of which the protagonist
is ignorant, namely that his obsession has
misguided him. It is in the creation and
sustainment of this pattern of verbal
irony, and in the complete subjugation of
the novelistic experience to a language
order originally alien to it, that Mahfouz
has achieved a feat unprecedented not only
in his own work but probably in Arabic
fiction altogether.
This
is the way "Respected Sir"
opens:
"The
door opened to reveal an infinitely
spacious room: a whole world of meanings
and motivations, not just a limited space
hurried in a mass of details. Those who
entered it, he believed, were swallowed
up, melted down. And as his consciousness
caught fire, he was lost in a magical
sense of wonder. At first, his
concentration wandered. He forgot what his
soul yearned to see - the floor, the
walls, the ceiling: even the god sitting
behind the magnificent desk. An electric
shock went through him, setting off in his
innermost heart an insane love for the
gloriousness of life on the pinnacle of
power. At this point the clarion call of
power urged him to kneel down and offer
himself in sacrifice. But followed, like
the rest, the less extreme path of pious
submissiveness, of subservience, of
security. Many childlike tears he would
have to shed before he could impose his
will. Yielding to an irresistible
temptation, he cast a furtive glance at
the divinity hunched behind the desk and
lowered his eyes with all the humility he
possessed. Hamza Al-Suwayfi, the Director
of Administration, led in the procession.
"These are the new employees, Your
Excellency", he said, addressing the
Director General. The Director General's
eyes surveyed their faces, including his.
He felt he was becoming part of
history."
This
is the way it ends:
"Empty
words of encouragement were hateful to
him, and he resigned himself to the fact
that taking up his new position was a
dream. He was also resigned to the fact
that position was a dream.
He was
also resigned to the fact that fathering
children was another dream. Yet, who knew?
What hurt him most was that everything
went on without any attention being paid
to him: appointments, promotions and
pensionings, love, marriage, and even
divorce, political conflicts and their
feverish slogans, the succession of day
and night. Down there, he could hear the
cries of hawkers announcing the approach
of winter. Maybe it was as well that the
new tomb out there in the sunlight had
given him such pleasure."
In
critics' eyes:
"Mahfouz's
work is freshly nuanced and hauntingly
lyrical. The Nobel Prize acknowledges the
universal significance of his
fictions" - Los Angeles Times Book
Review.
"In
"Respected Sir", Mahfouz retells
a familiar theme - vaulting ambition - in
a powerful and religious metaphor. Othman
Bayyumis' humble origins do not stop him
from coveting the Director-Generalship of
the governmental department he has entered
as an archives clerk. It is a vision that
becomes a lifelong pursuit, superseding
all other interests or people in his life.
What is essentially a prosaic experience
becomes - in Mahfouz's hands - a
beautifully crafted story of an exalted
and arduous holy quest."
"Palace
of Desire" starts as follows:
"Al-Sayyid
Ahmed Abd Al-Jawad closed the door behind
him and crossed the courtyard of his house
by the pale light of the stars. His step
was lethargic, and his walking stick sank
into the dusty earth whenever he landed on
it wearily. He felt on fire and craved
cold water so he could wash his face,
head, and neck and escape, if only
briefly, from the July heat and from the
inferno in his belly and head. Cheered by
the thought of cool water, he smiled. When
he entered the door leading to the
stairway, he could see a faint light
coming from above. It flowed along the
wall, revealing the motion of the hand
that held the lamp. He climbed the steps
with one on the railing and the other on
his stick. Its successive steps had long
ago acquired a special rhythm which
identified him as easily as his features.
Amina was visible at the head of the
stairs with the lamp in her hand. On
reaching her, he stopped to regain his
breath, for his chest was heaving. Then he
greeted her in his customary way."
And
ends:
"The
best qualities of his personality came
from Sa'd's guidance and leadership?
Yasin
stopped once more to open the door. Then
he held out his hand to Kamal. After
shaking hands with him, Kamal remembered
something that had slipped his mind for
too long.
Embarrassed
that he had forgotten, he told Yasin,
"I pray to God that you'll find your
wife has given birth safely".
Starting to leave, Yasin replied,
"God willing. And I hope you sleep
soundly." "
Critical
acclaim:
"Palace
of Desire" is, like its predecessor,
a grand novel of ideas... a marvelous
read" - Washington Post.
"His
towering strength as a writer is his
luminous specificity. All the magic,
mystery and suffering of Egypt in the
1920s are conveyed on a human scale“ - New
York Book Review
"A
splendid achievement”" - Kirkus
Review
"The
Egyptian novelist is above all a master
storyteller" - San Francisco
Chronicle.
"In
"Palace of Desire", we see the
intricate and complex tragedy of
patriarchy working itself out through
succeeding generations" - Chicago
Tribune
"Adrift
on the Nile" has this beginning:
"April,
month of dust and lies. The long,
high-ceilinged office, a gloomy storeroom
for cigarette smoke. On the shelves, the
files enjoy an easeful death. How
diverting they must find the civil servant
at work, carrying out, with utterly
serious mien, utterly trivial tasks.
Recording the arrival of registered post.
Filing Incoming mail. Outgoing mail. Ants,
cockroaches, and spiders, and the smell of
dust stealing in through the closed
windows.
"Have
you finished that report" the Head of
Department asked. Anis Zaki replied
indolently. "Yes", he said.
"I've sent it to the Director
General. The Head gave him a piercing look
that glinted glassily, like a beam of
light, through his thick spectacles. Had
he caught Anis grinning like an imbecile
at nothing. But people were used to
putting up with such nonsense in April,
month of dust and lies. The Head of
Department began to be overtaken by an
odd, involuntary movement. It spread
through all the parts of his body that
could be seen above the desk - slow and
undulating, but visibly progressing.
Gradually, he began to swell up. The
swelling spread from his chest to his
neck, to his face, and then over the
entire head. Anis stared fixedly at his
boss."
And
this end:
"Do
you consider yourself a model of
victory?" he asked her. "Among
those who are going down, there are some
surpass themselves in the attempt."
She began to speak about hope. He looked
out the Nile. The night fluttered its
wing, and its secrets were scattered like
the stars. Her words died to a whisper
echoing in the slumber of his dream.
Before long, he knew, the dark waters
would part to reveal the head of the
whale. She said to him, "You are no
longer with me." He said, and he was
talking to himself, "The cleverness
of the ape is the root of all misfortune.
He learned how to walk on two legs, and
his hands were free."
"That
means that I should leave." "And
he came down from the apes paradise in the
trees to the forest floor." "One
last question before I go, Do you have a
plan for the future, if things get
difficult." "And they said to
him: "Come back to the trees, or the
beasts will get you." "Do you
have the right to a pension if God forbids
- you are actually dismissed?"
"But he took a branch in one hand and
a stone in the other and set off
cautiously; looking away down a road that
had no end."
Praise:
" A
probing novel of spiritual emptiness.
Noble Laureate Mahfouz writes hypnotic
prose, by turns romantically lyrical and
tartly astringent" - Publisher
Weekly.
"Its
subtle portrayal of class alienation
evokes the author's major achievement, the
Cairo Trology" - Boston Globe.
"Quietly,
disturbingly incisive about modern Cairo's
uneasy truce between old way and new"
- Kirkus Review.
"Mahfouz's
novels provide a voice for his
culture" - Denver Post
First
part of "Journey of Ibn Fatouma":
"Life
and death, dreaming and wakefulness;
stations for the perplexed soul. It
traverses them stage by stage, taking
signs and hints from things, grouping
about the sea of darkness, clinging
stubbornly to a hope that smilingly and
mysteriously renews itself. Traveler, what
are you searching for? What emotions rage
in your heart? How will you govern your
natural impulses and capricious thoughts?
Why do you guffaw with laughter like a
cavalier? Why do you shed tears like a
child?"
Last
part:
"The
man agreed to undertake the task, so I
made him a present of a hundred dinars and
we recited together the opening chapter of
the Quran to seal the agreement. After
that, freeing myself of my misgivings, I
made ready for the final adventure with
unabated determination. With these words
ends the manuscript of the voyage of
Qindil Muhammad Al-Innabi, known as Ibn
Fatouma. No history book makes any mention
further of this traveler. Did he complete
his journey or did he perish on the way?
Did he enter the land of Gebel? How did he
fare there? Did he stay there till the end
of his life, or did he return to his
homeland as he intended? Will one day a
further manuscript be found describing his
last journey? Knowledge of all this lies
with the Knower of what is unseen and what
is seen."
High
lauding:
"A
morality play extolling the virtues of
tolerance and understanding." - Los
Angeles Times
"The
Journey of Ibn Fatouma is captivating in
its simplicity." - Cleveland Plain
Dealer
"Mahfouz's
pithy parable mocks the hypocrisy of
nations that wage war and maintain empire
in the name of brotherhood and
freedom." - Publisher Weekly
"A
slender, magical parable of idealism and
compromise through a stylised Middle East
odyssey." - Kirkus Reviews
"A
dreamy fable ... the artful mood of
langour and Mahfouz's exactness of
expression ensures that it will be well
received." - Booklist
"As
enchanting a tale as any he has
written." - Library Journal
Final
note:
In
awarding the 1988 Nobel Prize for
Literature to Naguib Mahfouz, the Swedish
Academy of Letters noted that
"through works rich in nuance - now
clearsightedly realistic, now evocatively
ambiguous - (Mahfouz) has formed an Arabic
narrative art that applies to all
mankind."
Mahfouz is the author of more than thirty
novels.
"He
is not only a Hugo and a Dickens, but also
a Galsworthy, a Mann, a Zola and a Jules
Romains." - Edward Said, London
Review of Books
But
above all he is an Egyptian lover of the
River Nile and one with endless quests.
His special concern is the grassroots in
people, life and facts.
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