Word: mahfouz
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...journalists who gathered in Stockholm's Stock Exchange building to learn the winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature were once more caught off guard. Naguib who? The answer: Mahfouz, a 76-year-old Egyptian novelist, playwright and film writer. If the choice was predictably unpredictable, the selection procedure seemed familiar. The Swedish Academy again paddled out of the mainstream, this time heading up the Nile to honor the first Arabic writer in the 87-year history of the prize...
Recognized as the father of the modern Arab novel, Mahfouz is frequently compared with such 19th century social realists as Dickens and Balzac. In nearly 40 novels and a dozen story collections, he has dealt with the social and political upheavals Egypt has experienced during his lifetime. His main contribution, says Sasson Somekh, a visiting professor of Arabic literature at Princeton, is the "creation of a new Egyptian style" that combines the narrative manner of classic texts such as The Thousand and One Nights with contemporary subject matter...
Mahdi said some of Mahfouz's works, including Trilogy and Children of Gebelawi will probably become classics. "They are the best thing that happened in this period of Arabic literature," he said...
Mahdi said he thought the award would lend increased prestige to Arabic literature. Although 12 of Mahfouz's works have been translated into English, they were published by smaller publishing houses and consequently received less attention...
...Mahfouz graduated from the University of Cairo. In the early 40's he joined the Egyptian Ministry of Culture where he worked until his retirement...