A Dickens of the Cairo Cafes

By R.Z. Sheppard

The journalists who gathered in Stockholm's Stock Exchange building to learn the winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature were once more caught off guard. Naguib who? The answer: Mahfouz, a 76-year-old Egyptian novelist, playwright and film writer. If the choice was predictably unpredictable, the selection procedure seemed familiar. The Swedish Academy again paddled out of the mainstream, this time heading up the Nile to honor the first Arabic writer in the 87-year history of the prize.

Recognized as the father of the modern Arab novel, Mahfouz is frequently compared with such 19th century social realists as Dickens and Balzac. In nearly 40 novels and a dozen story collections, he has dealt with the social and political upheavals Egypt has experienced during his lifetime. His main contribution, says Sasson Somekh, a visiting professor of Arabic literature at Princeton, is the "creation of a new Egyptian style" that combines the narrative manner of classic texts such as The Thousand and One Nights with contemporary subject matter.

The author has lavished an accumulation of vivid detail on re-creating his special part of the world. "He's immensely attached, in the most loving way, to Cairo," says Edward Said, a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. Indeed, Mafouz seldom leaves the city, where he lives in a modest apartment with his wife and two daughters. Retired in 1971 from his post as an adviser to the Minister of Culture, he spends most of his time in cafes, drinking coffee and exchanging gossip. He is also known as one of the best joke tellers in Cairo, no small compliment in a land noted for its wit.

Mahfouz's untranslated trilogy Al-Thulathiyya (1957) is a 1,500-page family saga that spans 27 years and both World Wars and is read as a microcosm of Cairene society. He supported Gamal Abdel Nasser's 1952 coup d'etat but gradually grew disillusioned with the colonel's policies. "It is true that the revolution liberated the Egyptian people and pushed them into modern life," says Mahfouz, "but it led to many wars that tired us out." Mahfouz found himself at the center of controversy in 1979 when he publicly backed Anwar Sadat's peace treaty with Israel. As a result, he was denounced by ; Islamic fundamentalists, and his works were banned in many Arab countries.

Columbia University Press, which normally sells only 200 copies of Mahfouz's work each year, reported receiving 400 orders after last week's announcement. The author too is in demand, but he is unlikely to stray far from his favorite cafes, not even to accept his Nobel and its $390,000 cash prize in December. He is pleading frail health, although Ahmed Bahaa-Eldin, columnist for the newspaper al-Ahram and a close friend, says that he chuckles at the excuse. The Arab world's best-known novelist is, Bahaa-Eldin notes, famous among his friends for his fear of flying.

With reporting by Amany Radwan/Cairo and Janice C. Simpson/New York