| Naguib Mahfouz |
Portrait of the Author as a Historian: Naguib Mahfouz
The ideas of a French philosopher provided the great Egyptian novelist with a way of assessing the good and the bad in his nation’s past.
History Today Volume 67 Issue
Throughout his life, Naguib Mahfouz felt caught between the timelessness of Egypt’s ancient past and the turbulence of its recent history. Even as a boy, he had felt it. Growing up in a devout Muslim household in one of Cairo’s oldest quarters, his childhood had been shaped by the unchanging obligations of faith and overshadowed by the legacy of the past. When he was not studying the Koran, he was playing in the streets of al-Gamaliya, not far from Saladin’s Citadel, or visiting the pyramids with his mother. But, though it was easy to believe that he was insulated from time’s flux, he could see that Egypt was changing around him. Over the preceding 40 years it had embarked on a process of rapid social and economic modernisation. Industrial development was spurred on by foreign investment, new roads and railways were constructed, educational reforms were implemented and scientific rationalism was exalted. Political changes were in the air, too. Though Egypt was notionally a British protectorate, liberal nationalism was on the rise and, before Mahfouz had turned eight, calls for independence had spilled over into violent revolution.