Death of Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz died on 30 August 2006 in Agouza, aged 94. An Egyptian novelist, Mahfouz is the most celebrated writer in the modern Arabic language. His many novels and short stories depict life in Cairo, most famously in the Cairo Trilogy, which follows a merchant family across three generations in the first half of the twentieth century. Children of Gebelawi, an allegorical work, was banned in Egypt for its treatment of religious themes. In 1988 he became the first Arabic-language author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1994 he survived a knife attack by extremists outside his home, and he continued to write, with difficulty, until his final years.

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