Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006), full name Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha, was an Egyptian writer and novelist who is known as Dickens of the Cairo cafes and the Balzac of Egypt. His most important works include The Cairo Trilogy and The Children of Geblawi. He was awarded Nobel Prize for literature in 1988.

Wisdom & Quotes

• Art is a criticism of society and life, and I believe that if life became perfect, art would be meaningless and cease to exist.
• What's wrong with the World, O Zaabalwi?

They've turned it upside down and made it insipid.

• The real malady is fear of life, not death.

- Small-talk on the Nile

• What a great number of graves! The land extends with them all the way to the horizon, raising its hands up in surrender though nothing could have threatened it. The city of silence and truth. The meeting place of success and failure, the criminal and the victim. The gathering place of thieves and policemen, where they lie in peace beside each other for the first and last times.

- al Liss wa 'Kilab

• For the first time in my life, I felt that a wave, a justice was sweeping away a deep-seated decay without any indulgence. I dearly wished that it would keep going without hesitation or deviation, in a spirit of purity forever.

Asoka Mehta