He was born on December 11, 1911 in Cairo, Egypt, and died on September 30, 2006 (94) in Agouza, Egypt. Egyptian writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. He began writing at the age of 17. He is considered one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature to explore the subject of existentialism together with Taha Hussein. He has published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of film scripts, hundreds of columns for Egyptian newspapers, and five plays in his 70-year career. Many of his works have been turned into Egyptian and foreign films. Before the Nobel Prize, only a few of his novels had been published in the West.

He was born into a lower-middle-class Egyptian Muslim family. His father was a government official, and his illiterate mother often took him on numerous cultural outings. The family was very pious and the house was harsh.

The revolution in Egypt of 1919 had a huge impact on him. From the window of his house, he often saw soldiers firing at demonstrators in the street.

After high school, he was admitted to the University of Egypt (now Cairo University) in 1930, where he studied philosophy, graduating in 1934. After receiving a master's degree in philosophy, he decided to stop his studies. and become a professional writer. He worked as a journalist for al-Risal and wrote two short stories.

After earning a BA in Philosophy, he joined the Egyptian Civil Service, where he continued to work in various positions and in various ministries until his retirement in 1971.

First, he worked as a clerk at the University of Cairo, and then in 1938 as a parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Islamic Funds. In the 1950s, he worked as the censorship director at the Art Office, as the director of the Kinematography Support Foundation, and then as a consultant at the Ministry of Culture.

He planned to write the entire history of Egypt in a series of books. His prose is characterized by a blunt expression of ideas. His written work covers a wide range of topics including socialism, homosexuality, and God. Writing on some of these topics was forbidden in Egypt.

The works often deal with the development of Egypt in the 20th century and combine intellectual and cultural influences from both the East and the West. His own contact with foreign literature began in his youth with Western crime fiction, Russian classics, and modernist writers. Mahfouz's stories almost always take place in the densely populated neighborhoods of Cairo, where his heroes, usually ordinary people, struggle to cope with the modernization of society and the temptations of Western values.

In many of his works he advocated Egyptian nationalism and expressed sympathy for the post-war party. In his early youth, he was attracted to socialist and democratic ideals. The influence of socialist ideals is strongly reflected in his first two novels as well as in many of his later works. Parallel to his sympathy for socialism and democracy was his dislike of Islamic extremism.

Mahfouz did not shy away from controversy outside of his work. As a consequence of his support for the Sadata peace treaty with Israel at Camp David in 1978, his books were banned in many Arab countries until he won the Nobel Prize. Like many Egyptian writers and intellectuals, Mahfouz was on the Islamic fundamentalist "death list". Mahfouz was given police protection, but in 1994 an extremist managed to attack the 82-year-old novelist by stabbing him in the neck outside his home in Cairo. He survived, permanently affected by nerve damage to the right upper limb. Following the incident, Mahfouz was unable to write for more than a few minutes a day, and consequently produced fewer and fewer works. Then he lived under the constant protection of a security guard.

An obsessive return to the subject of death leads to boring monotony. The theme of death is often introduced as an additional, superfluous element, such as in the story Tyrant, where the master, after raping a worker, kills her for no reason. Mahfuz operates in a narrow circle of repeating realities. The background of the tracks is gloomy, empty streets, wineries, bars, lonely houses, a desert. He is fond of banal and primitive juxtapositions - death with the joy of life, love with hate, the rule of law and crime. He borrows from Western literature the themes of hopeless waiting, sterile struggle, pointless action, boredom and unjustified death, and repeats one theme endlessly.

In his works, he does not use modern means of expression, he writes in a simple, easy classical language, and relies mainly on the author's narrative. Perhaps the decadence and pessimistic philosophy of his short stories is an expression of the writer's spiritual crisis as a result of the plight of Egypt after Israel's aggression in 1967.

Naguib Mahfouz strictly adheres to the chronology of events, presents in detail facts from the lives of his heroes, which serve to emphasize the character traits of individual characters. He analyzes their psyche and motives of behavior, introducing many supporting characters related to the main characters, thus extending the image of the environment.

In 1957, Naguib Mahfouz received the state award for the trilogy. To this day, this novel represents the pinnacle of achievement not only in Egyptian, but also in general Arab socio-moral literature. The novels of the next stage of creativity differ from the previous ones in a different approach to the subject, a more modern style, and the use of new means of expression by the writer. Naguib Mahfouz usually deals with the life problems of only one character, but contrary to the convention adopted in earlier works, especially the trilogy, he does not give him an equivalent with opposing character and personality traits. The fate of this single hero is the only plot of the novel which concludes with a specific thesis of the author, often expressed symbolically.

His extremely abundant literary work, closely related to the urban environment of Egyptian society, devoted to the complex issues of this environment and the most important aspects of urban life, exerts a great influence on young Egyptian writers and on Arab novelists from other countries who consciously or unknowingly continue his creative method.

Naguib Mahfouz, in his short stories and first dramas, breaks with the realistic direction represented in the novel, moves to the position of existentialism, introducing symbolism and surreal elements into his works.

The most popular book by Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Najib Mahfuz - "Hamid of Midakk Alley". This is Mahfuz's first novel translated into a foreign language (English in 1964), and the first to be published in Polish. Its action, like other works by this author, takes place among the narrow streets of Cairo, where in old houses there are handicraft workshops and small shops, and beautifully carved shutters hide the family life of the inhabitants from the world, with its specific customs, joys and sorrows, often tragedies. Such a tragic heroine is Hamida - a lane beauty, a naive and simple girl, but boldly and unscrupulous fighting for her happiness. Wishing to get out into the wide world, where her dreams are to come true, she does not hesitate to act against the applicable norms, disregarding the opinion of her relatives and trampling on their feelings. But the world failed Hamida's hopes. Even cleverly thought out revenge will not reach the perpetrator of her misfortune. The book has so far been published in 24 languages.

The most important works

• Al-Hilal - the magazine in which he published his short stories and short stories
• Al-Ahram - Same as above
• The Cairo Trilogy - the main work in the 1950s, the story is set in the districts in which he grew up, after completing this work, he stopped writing for a few years, individual volumes are the names of the streets of the old Cairo district, they reflect the facts and events very faithfully,
• Conversations on the Nile - one of his most popular works, a film was made on its basis, he criticizes the fall of Egyptian society in the time of Nasser
• Children of Gebelawi - one of the most famous works, depicting the prophet Gebelawi and the lives of his children (average Egyptians living as religious figures), was banned throughout the Arab world until 2006
• Karnak
• Hamida from the Midakk Alley
• Tales of old Cairo
• House of Ashura
• The Thief and the Dogs - a novel based on the folk theme of a noble robber (Janosik)
• A whisper of madness - the first collection of stories, 1938, a critique of landlords and landlords, showing the moral corruption of high society
• Children of our alley - a novel, the first one written after a long writing break

The thief and the dogs

The dramatic events of the story take place both in the elegant neighborhoods of Cairo on the Nile and in the homes of the poor around Cairo's famous citadel. The hero's fate is an allegory of the eternal confrontation of an individual with society, set in the reality of the Egyptian capital of the 1950s, where the police are omnipresent and conflicts are resolved by violence. Said Mahran, a former student attendant, unfulfilled self-taught, circus performer and finally a thief financially supporting a group of students plotting against the monarchy, is imprisoned. He is released after the fall of the government in 1953, obsessed with a desire to take revenge on his unfaithful wife and friends who have betrayed him. Within a few days, in the hectic atmosphere of July, his fate is to be decided.