LadyLushana: Death of Naguib Mahfouz

President Bush is saddened by the death of such an extraordinary artist. Really? Has he read any of his books? nayj

Naguib Mahfouz: 1911-2006

"Egyptian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz passed away today in Cairo. Although the news is not a shock--he had been seriously ill for a few weeks--it is still difficult to accept. I find myself thinking about the first time I read him, when I was twelve or thirteen. Our high school didn't have a library, so our Arabic teachers organized a "borrowing club"--each of us would bring a book at the beginning of the trimester, and the books thus collected formed the class's pool, from which we could choose what to read every other week. That's how I came to Naguib Mahfouz's Miramar, and, later, to his other novels and stories. I will have more to say about him and his significance to Arabic letters very soon. Stay tuned."posted by Laila Lalami on moorishgirl at 08:31 AM filed under literary life