Naguib Mahfouz: The Pursuit of Meaning

by El-Enany,Rasheed

• ISBN13: 9780415073950
• ISBN10: 0415073952
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1993-06-25
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Naguib Mahfouz is the most important Arabic fiction writer of this century. Born in 1911, his long and prolific writing career represents the evolution of the novel genre in Arabic literature. His books are a rich record of the tragic tensions attendant on a nation's quest for freedom and modernity. In 1988 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Naguib Mahfouz is a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to the writer and his accomplishments. Rasheed El-Enany presents a systematic evaluation of the author's life and environment; local and foreign influences on him; elements of his thought and technique and the evolution of his craft. While each work is discussed individually, emphasis is placed on the thematic and aesthetic elements of continuity in his work. In particular, El-Enany challenges the traditional classification of Mahfouz's work into four chronological phases historical, realist, modernist, and indigenous or traditional. It is demonstrated that elements ofthese forms recur throughout Mahfouz's varied and experimental writings. This book is the story of Mahfouz's struggle to free his novels from prevalent, predominantly Western molds and to express his own socio-political thought within the Arabic inheritance.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements	xi
The Writer and His World	1	(34)
Childhood, family and locality	1	(10)
Education and intellectual influences	11	(11)
Political beliefs and sympathies	22	(7)
The novelist as civil servant	29	(2)
A personal sketch	31	(4)
Looking Backward to the Present: The Historical Novels	35	(12)
The Game of Fates	36	(1)
Rhodopis	37	(1)
The Struggle of Thebes	38	(2)
Some considerations of form in the early historical novels	40	(2)
History revisited: Before the Throne	42	(3)
He Who Lives in the Truth	45	(2)
Pains of Rebirth: The Conflict Between Past and Present	47	(23)
Khan al-Khalili	47	(4)
New Cairo	51	(3)
Midaq Alley	54	(7)
Mirage	61	(5)
The Beginning and the End	66	(4)
Time and the Man: Four Egyptian Sagas	70	(29)
The Cairo Trilogy	71	(19)
There Only Remains an Hour	90	(2)
The Day the Leader was Killed	92	(3)
Qushtumur	95	(4)
The Aborted Dream: On Earth as in Heaven	99	(29)
The Thief and the Dogs	102	(2)
Autumn Quail	104	(2)
The Search	106	(1)
The Beggar	107	(3)
Chatter on the Nile	110	(3)
Miramar	113	(2)
Love in the Rain and The Karnak	115	(4)
The Heart of the Night	119	(5)
The Age of Love	124	(1)
Wedding Song	125	(3)
Fragments of Time: The Episodic Novels	128	(47)
Mirrors	131	(2)
Fountain and Tomb	133	(3)
Tales of Mornings and Evenings	136	(1)
Good Morning to You	137	(4)
Children of Gebelawi	141	(3)
Epic of the Harafish	144	(15)
Nights of the Thousand Nights	159	(9)
The Travels of Ibn Fattuma	168	(7)
Matters of Form: A Case Study of Respected Sir	175	(20)
The plot	175	(4)
The viewpoint	179	(3)
Themes and presentation	182	(6)
Characterization	188	(4)
Language	192	(3)
Images of God, Death and Society: The Short Stories and the Plays	195	(18)
The beginning	196	(1)
The second beginning	196	(4)
The flight into absurdity	200	(4)
The plays	204	(4)
The huwariyyat	208	(1)
The recoil from absurdity	209	(4)
Notes	213	(38)
The works of Naguib Mahfouz	251	(7)
A guide for further reading	258	(5)
Index	263