He was born in 1911 in the Gamaleyya quarter in Cairo's old city, his family later moving to the newer suburb Abbaseyya. Mafouz's father was a civil servant. Naguib read extensively as a child.
Mahfouz graduated from Cairo University in 1934 with a degree in philosophy, then worked towards an M.A. for a year before deciding to become a professional writer.
Naguib Mahfouz worked as a journalist briefly before joining the civil service, working in several ministries before his retirement in 1972.
Mafouz's first novel, Mockery of the Fates appeared in 1939. His first novel to achieve wide success was The Cairo Trilogy, published in serial form beginning in 1956. In total, he wrote some forty novels and short-story collections, thirty screenplays and many plays as well. Naguib Mahfouz was the first and only Arabic writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Following a supportive statement of Salman Rushdie, whose Satanic Verses had angered fundamentalists enough to put him on a death list, Naguib Mahfouz was attacked and stabbed by a fundamentalist in 1994. Mahfouz himself had called The Satanic Verses insulting to Islam, but supported Rushdie in his position as a writer.
Mahfouz died in Cairo on August 30th 2006.
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MLA style: "Naguib Mahfouz - Biography". Nobelprize.org. 20 Dec 2010 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1988/mahfouz-bio.html
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