Naguib Mahfouz

EGYPTIAN WRITER

Naguib Mahfouz, also spelled Najīb Maḥfūẓ, (born December 11, 1911, Cairo,
Egypt—died August 30, 2006, Cairo), Egyptian novelist and screenplay writer,
who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, the first Arabic writer to
be so honoured.

Mahfouz was the son of a civil servant and grew up in Cairo’s Al-Jamāliyyah
district. He attended the Egyptian University (now Cairo University), where in
1934 he received a degree in philosophy. He worked in the Egyptian civil
service in a variety of positions from 1934 until his retirement in 1971.

Mahfouz’s earliest published works were short stories. His early novels, such
as Rādūbīs (1943; “Radobis”), were set in ancient Egypt, but he had turned to
describing modern Egyptian society by the time he began his major work, the
series Al-Thulāthiyyah (1956–57; “Trilogy”), known as The Cairo Trilogy. Its three
novels—Bayn al-qaṣrayn (1956; Palace Walk), Qaṣr al-shawq (1957; Palace of
Desire), and Al-Sukkariyyah(1957; Sugar Street)—depict the lives of three
generations of different families in Cairo from World War Iuntil after the 1952
military coup that overthrew King Farouk. The trilogy provides a penetrating
overview of 20th-century Egyptian thought, attitudes, and social change.

In subsequent works, Mahfouz offered critical views of the old Egyptian

monarchy, British colonialism, and contemporary Egypt. Several of his more
notable novels deal with social issues involving women and political prisoners.
His novel Awlād ḥāratinā (1959; Children of the Alley) was banned in Egypt for a
time because of its controversial treatment of religion and its use of characters
based on Muhammad, Moses, and other figures. Islamic militants, partly because
of their outrage over the work, later called for his death, and in 1994 Mahfouz
was stabbed in the neck.

Mahfouz’s other novels included Al-Liṣṣ wa-al-kilāb (1961; The Thief and the

Dogs), Al-Shaḥḥādh (1965; The Beggar), and Mīrāmār (1967; Miramar), all of
which consider Egyptian society under Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime; Afrāḥ al-
qubba (1981; Wedding Song), set among several characters associated with a
Cairo theatre company; and the structurally experimental Ḥadīth al-ṣabāḥ wa-al-
masāʾ (1987; Morning and Evening Talk), which strings together in alphabetical
order dozens of character sketches. Together, his novels, which were among the
first to gain widespread acceptance in the Arabic-speaking world, brought
the genre to maturity within Arabic literature.

Mahfouz’s achievements as a short-story writer are demonstrated in such

collections as Dunyā Allāh(1963; God’s World). The Time and the Place, and
Other Stories (1991) and The Seventh Heaven (2005) are collections of his
stories in English translation. Mahfouz wrote more than 45 novels and short-story
collections, as well as some 30 screenplays and several plays. Aṣdāʾ al-sīrah al-
dhātiyyah (1996; Echoes of an Autobiography) is a collection of parables and his
sayings. In 1996 the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature was established to
honour Arabic writers.

Writing Career

Mahfouz published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts
and five plays over a 70-year career. Possibly his most famous work, The Cairo
Trilogy, depicts the lives of three generations of different families in Cairo from
World War I until after the 1952 military coup that overthrew King Farouk. He was
a board member of the publisher Dar el-Ma'aref. Many of his novels were
serialized in Al-Ahram, and his writings also appeared in his weekly column,
"Point of View". Before the Nobel Prize only a few of his novels had appeared in
the West.

ABOUT THE CAIRO TRILOGY

Naguib Mahfouz’s magnificent epic trilogy of colonial Egypt appears here in one
volume for the first time. The Nobel Prize—winning writer’s masterwork is the
engrossing story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Britain’s occupation of Egypt
in the early decades of the twentieth century.
The novels of The Cairo Trilogy trace three generations of the family of tyrannical
patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict
hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence. Palace Walkintroduces us to his
gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and
his three sons–the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and
the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. Al-Sayyid Ahmad’s rebellious children
struggle to move beyond his domination in Palace of Desire, as the world around
them opens to the currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoil
brought by the 1920s. Sugar Street brings Mahfouz’s vivid tapestry of an evolving
Egypt to a dramatic climax as the aging patriarch sees one grandson become a
Communist, one a Muslim fundamentalist, and one the lover of a powerful
politician.
Throughout the trilogy, the family’s trials mirror those of their turbulent country
during the years spanning the two World Wars, as change comes to a society
that has resisted it for centuries. Filled with compelling drama, earthy humor, and
remarkable insight, The Cairo Trilogy is the achievement of a master storyteller.

Amrita Kaur Pritam

INDIAN AUTHOR AND POET

Amrita Kaur Pritam, Punjabi writer and poet (born Aug. 31, 1919, Gujranwala,
British India [now in Pakistan]—died Oct. 31, 2005, New Delhi, India), wrote
increasingly more feminist poems and other works in which she exposed the
suffering of oppressed women and the violence and misery endured by Punjabis
during the Partition (1947) of India. Pritam was born into a Sikh family and
published her first collection of stories at age 16. During a literary career of more
than 60 years, she authored (in Hindi as well as Punjabi) some 24 novels, 23
volumes of poetry, and 15 short-story collections. She was the first woman to
receive the Sahitya Akademi Award and the first Punjabi woman to be given the
Padma Shri Award. In 1981 Pritam was presented with the Jnanpith Award,
India’s highest literary award. Her best-known works included
the novel Pinjar (1950; “The Skeleton”), which in 2003 was made into a
Bollywood film of the same name, and the poem Aaj aakhaan Waris Shah
noo (“Ode to Waris Shah”).
In her career spanning over six decades, she penned 28 novels, 18 anthologies of prose, five
short stories and 16 miscellaneous prose volumes.
Novel

 Pinjar
 Doctor Dev
 Kore Kagaz, Unchas Din
 Dharti, Sagar aur Seepian
 Rang ka Patta
 Dilli ki Galiyan
 Terahwan Suraj
 Yaatri
 Jilavatan (1968)
 Hardatt Ka Zindaginama
Autobiography

 Black Rose (1968)
 Rasidi Ticket (1976)
 Shadows of Words (2004)
Short stories
 Kahaniyan jo Kahaniyan Nahi
 Kahaniyon ke Angan mein
 Stench of Kerosene
Poetry anthologies

 Amrit Lehran (Immortal Waves)(1936)

 Jiunda Jiwan (The Exuberant Life) (1939)
 Trel Dhote Phul (1942)
 O Gitan Valia (1942)
 Badlam De Laali (1943)
 Sanjh de laali (1943)
 Lok Peera (The People's Anguish) (1944)
 Pathar Geetey (The Pebbles) (1946)
 Punjab Di Aawaaz (1952)
 Sunehade (Messages) (1955) – Sahitya Akademi Award
 Ashoka Cheti (1957)
 Kasturi (1957)
 Nagmani (1964)
 Ik Si Anita (1964)
 Chak Nambar Chatti (1964)
 Uninja Din (49 Days) (1979)
 Kagaz Te Kanvas (1981)- Bhartiya Jnanpith
 Chuni Huyee Kavitayen
 Ek Baat
Literary journal

 Nagmani, poetry monthly

Amrita Pritam was born as Amrit Kaur in 1919 in Gujranwala, Punjab, in
present-day Pakistan, the only child of Raj Bibi, who was a school teacher and
Kartar Singh Hitkari, who was a poet, a scholar of Braj Bhasha, and the editor
edited a literary journal. Besides this, he was a pracharak – a preacher of the
Sikh faith. Amrita's mother died when she was eleven. Soon after, she and her
father moved to Lahore, where she lived till her migration to India in 1947.
Confronting adult responsibilities, and besieged by loneliness following her
mother's death, she began to write at an early age. Her first anthology of
poems, Amrit Lehran (Immortal Waves) was published in 1936, at age sixteen,
the year she married Pritam Singh, an editor to whom she was engaged in early
childhood, and changed her name from Amrita Kaur to Amrita Pritam. Half a
dozen collections of poems were to follow between 1936 and 1943.
Though she began her journey as romantic poet, soon she shifted gears, and
became part of the Progressive Writers' Movement and its effect was seen in her
collection, Lok Peed (People's Anguish) (1944), which openly criticized the war-
torn economy, after the Bengal famine of 1943. She was also involved in social
work to certain extent and participated in such activities wholeheartedly, after
Independence when social activist Guru Radha Kishan took the initiative to bring
the first Janta Library in Delhi, which was inaugurated by Balraj Sahni and Aruna
Asaf Ali and contributed to the occasion accordingly. This study centre cum
library is still running at Clock Tower, Delhi. She also worked at Lahore Radio
Station for a while, before the partition of India
Renowned theatre person and the director of the immortal partition movie 'Garam
Hava', MS Sathyu paid a theatrical tribute to her through the rare theatrical
performance 'Ek Thee Amrita'.