Essays of His Later Years: The Non-Fiction of Naguib Mahfouz: Volume IV - Paperback

by Naguib Mahfouz (Author), Rasheed El-Enany (Introduction by), R. Neil Hewison (Translator)

A firsthand account of the history of the political and cultural issues of the Mubarak era by Naguib Mahfouz, the greatest writer of the time, offering insight into his political beliefs that are often opaque in his fiction.

Although he had largely stopped writing fiction by the end of the 1980s, Naguib Mahfouz continued to pen essays for al-Ahram newspaper, offering letters of advice and reflection to his beloved Egyptian public. His steady outpouring was not to be stopped until his attempted assassination in 1994, when a young man, in the grip of religious extremism, stabbed the author in the neck.

In the years approaching the attack, Mahfouz wrote with empathy and forgiveness for those who turn in desperation to terrorism. These remarkably prescient essays display a mature and measured reaction to the increasingly violent world Mahfouz perceived around him. With their unwavering commitment to tolerance, democracy, and hope in dark times, his essays feel as pertinent today as they were thirty years ago.

Essays of His Later Years is the last of four volumes in which Mahfouz's non-fiction is translated into English for the first time.

Author Biography

Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) was the greatest Arab writer of the twentieth century. Born in the old Islamic Quarter of Cairo in 1911, he began writing when he was seventeen before entering university to study as a student of philosophy in 1930. He is the author of over thirty novels. In 1988, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. R. Neil Hewison is the author of Fayoum Pottery: Ceramic Arts and Crafts in an Egyptian Oasis and The Fayoum: History and Guide. He has translated several other works by Yusuf Idris, Yusuf Abu Rayya, and Gamal al-Ghitani.