Naguib Mahfouz, 1911 - 2006.

Naguib Mahfouz, who became the first Arab writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for his novels depicting Egyptian life in his beloved corner of ancient Cairo, died Wednesday, his doctor said. He was 94.

Lee Keath for the AP.

Everything to do with dramatisation interests me; it has been my career.... I used to watch a lot of films. I would go every week to at least one foreign film and one Arabic film. I loved action and crime in particular and was a fan of Hitchcock.

Mahfouz, talking about his screenwriting career, as recorded by Mohamed Salmawy for the Al-Ahram Weekly.

See also: Bio, bibliography, Nobel lecture and more at Nobelprize.org; Wikipedia entry; Books and Writers.

Updates: Lee Smith in Slate and Robert D McFadden in the New York Times (a sidebar points to related pieces as well).

Update, 9/2: Laila Lalami in the Nation: "With the death of Mahfouz, Egypt has been deprived of its greatest living writer and of its last icon of the twentieth century, and the world has lost one of its most humane literary figures."

Update, 9/5: A dossier in the Al-Ahram Weekly.

Posted by dwhudson at August 30, 2006 1:12 AM