Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition.

Boullata, Issa J.

Naguib Mahfouz achieved regional fame in the Arab world long before the worldwide recognition associated with his being awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize (see WLT 63:1, pp. 5-9). The book under review is a successful attempt to explain both his regional and his global acclaim. In it the fascinating fictional universe of this Egyptian novelist is explored as well as the inner workings of the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy. A well-documented volume on which the two editors cooperated with ten contributors and two translators, Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition is a collection of consistently high quality, the genesis of which was a symposium held at the University of Massachusetts.

After an introductory essay by the editors mapping the world of Naguib Mahfouz, three articles written respectively by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Sarah Lawall, and Roger Allen place Mahfouz in the context of the historical development of the Arabic novel and its relation to world literature, cogently argue his merits, and discuss the circumstances leading to his receipt of the Nobel Prize. Gamal al-Ghitani's piece, translated from Arabic by Mona N. Mikhail, offers an intimate view of Mahfouz by this Egyptian novelist who is a disciple of the laureate. This is followed by an article by Samia Mehrez, who elaborates on Mahfouz's personal predicament in the whirlpool of Egyptian politics and how he has precariously managed to sail the difficult waters safely.

The Cairo setting of Mahfouz's novels is studied by Caroline Williams and Mona N. Mikhall in two separate articles, the former focusing on place and time, the latter on existential themes. Michael Beard offers a succinct and candid explanation of the puzzlement of Mahfouz's Western readers and shows how his fiction is different from modernist Western fiction, highlighting subjectivity and interiority; he explains how it preserves, through lateral narrative extensions, deep human expressions of its own culture. Miriam Cooke's essay defends the proposition that Mahfouz's women characters, usually described as "flat," are indeed rebels seeking independence, particularly the prostitutes in his novels. Fedwa Malti-Douglas studies the strong relations which Mahfouz's fiction has with Arab tradition by being artistically innovative yet firmly rooted in the Islamic heritage with a poignant contemporary message. The final essay, by Gaber Asfour, translated from the Arabic by Ayman A. el-Desouky, is a survey of Mahfouz's Arab critics, analyzing the many approaches they have adopted in order to understand his art and thought and opening new horizons for literary critics and scholars alike.

The two editors are to be congratulated on their success in eliciting excellent contributions that have given the volume the unity of purpose they must have had in mind. Each in its own way, the contributed articles have helped to achieve this purpose: individually as insightful scholarly articles, and collectively as cumulative efforts that present Naguib Mahfouz clearly and intelligently to English readers.

Issa J. Boullata McGill University

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