Naguib Mahfouz was born on December 11, 1911. Mahfouz was an Egyptian novelist who was awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature, the first (and still only) Arab writer to receive that honor.

Mahfouz studied philosophy at Cairo University, and after graduation, spent his career working in various positions in the Egyptian civil service. His first three novels, published between 1939 and 1944, were set in ancient Egypt, and were part of a planned 30-volume series that would cover the entire history of Egypt. The series was abandoned, though, and never went beyond those three novels. Khufu's Wisdom, Rhadopis of Nubia, and Thebes at War are collected as Three Novels of Ancient Egypt (e-book | print).

After those novels, most of Mahfouz's work was set in contemporary Egypt and explored the impact of social change on ordinary Egyptians. His attempts to accurately describe the full range of Egyptian society have been compared to the work of Balzac and Dickens, and Mahfouz cited Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as important influences on his work.

Egyptian society went through a great deal of change during Mahfouz's life. He was a child during the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, which ended British rule and led to Egyptian independence, but said that he had strong memories of seeing conflict in the streets between British soldiers and Egyptian protestors. As a young man, he was a supporter of the 1952 Egyptian Revolution, which overthrew the monarchy and established a constitutional republic in Egypt.

Mahfouz's best-known novels in the United States are the three books known as the Cairo Trilogy. Palace Walk (e-book | e-audio | print), Palace of Desire (e-book | e-audio | print), and Sugar Street (e-book | e-audio | print) were published in 1956 and 1957, and they follow the life of one man, covering roughly the span between the two revolutions.

Under the rule of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, reform in Egypt came more slowly than Mahfouz had hoped, and he became disillusioned with the leaders of the 1952 revolution. His novels focused increasingly on the disappointing results. The 1966 novel Adrift on the Nile (e-book | print) looked at the decadence of the upper class during the Nasser years; 1974's Karnak Cafe (e-book | print) explored the challenges of remaining idealistic in an increasingly repressive country.

Perhaps his most pessimistic novel, and certainly his most controversial was 1959's Children of the Alley (e-book | print). An allegorical retelling of several Bible stories, with a father and three squabbling sons who represented God and the religious traditions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, the novel was banned as blasphemous in most of the Arab world and wasn't published in Egypt until after Mahfouz's death in 2006.

Mahfouz's novels took a lighter turn in the 1980s and were often inspired by fables. Arabian Nights and Days (e-book | print) was directly inspired by the folk tales of One Thousand and One Nights (e-book | e-audio | print); The Journey of Ibn Fattouma (e-book | print) was an Arabic variation on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (e-book | e-audio | print | audio).

In 1989, during the controversy surrounding Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (e-book | e-audio | print | audio), Mahfouz defended Rushdie. He agreed with critics that Rushdie's novel was offensive to Islam, but thought that Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini had gone too far in sentencing Rushdie to death. That stance led to death threats against Mahfouz. He was given police protection, but in 1994, a would-be assassin stabbed him in the neck. Mahfouz survived, but the nerves in his arm were badly damaged, leaving him unable to use a pen. Mahfouz had to dictate his writing after that, and his output diminished dramatically. He had published roughly a novel every year from the mid-1950s through the 1980s; in the last twelve years of his life, he published only two novels.

Also This Week

December 16, 1773

A group of protestors destroyed a shipment of tea by throwing it into Boston harbor, a protest that later came to be known as the Boston Tea Party. The British tax on tea angered the American colonists, who believed that since they had no representation in Parliament, Parliament had no right to impose taxes on them. The Boston Tea Party was among the first in a series of events that led to the colonies declaring their independence from England. Harlow Giles Unger tells the story of the Tea Party and subsequent events in American Tempest (e-book | e-audio | print).

December 12, 1903

Yasujiro Ozu was born. Ozu was a Japanese filmmaker who began his career making silent films in the late 1920s. His most important films were made in the years after World War II, though it wasn't until after his death in 1963 that his films began to be widely seen outside Japan. His visual style is distinctive; the camera rarely moves and is often placed very low, filming the actors at an upward angle. Two of his most admired films are the 1953 family drama Tokyo Story (streaming | DVD) and 1959's Floating Weeds (streaming | DVD), in which an aging actor confronts his past.

December 10, 1958

Cornelia Funke was born. Funke is an author of fantasy novels for children and young adults. Her best-known work is the Inkheart trilogy, in which a girl is caught up in the conflict between a hero and a villain who have escaped from one of her father's books into the real world. The trilogy begins with Inkheart (e-book | e-audio | print | audio); the 2009 film adaptation stars Brendan Fraser, Helen Mirren, and Andy Serkis.

December 11, 1958

Nikki Sixx was born. Sixx is the bass player and primary songwriter for the band Mötley Crüe, which had its biggest success during the pop/metal era of the late 1980s with hits like "Home Sweet Home," "Dr. Feelgood," and "Girls, Girls, Girls." Sixx's memoir, The Heroin Diaries (e-book | e-audio | print), focuses on his struggle to recover from drug addiction.