Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. Mahfouz is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers in Arabic literature, along with Taha Hussein, to explore themes of existentialism. He is the only Egyptian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He published 35 novels, over 350 short stories, 26 screenplays, hundreds of op-ed columns for Egyptian newspapers, and seven plays over a 70-year career, from the 1930s until 2004. All of his novels take place in Egypt, and always mentions the lane, which equals the world. His most famous works include The Cairo Trilogy and Children of Gebelawi. Many of Mahfouz's works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films; no Arab writer exceeds Mahfouz in number of works that have been adapted for cinema and television. While Mahfouz's literature is classified as realist literature, existential themes appear in it.
Reem Bassiouney is an Egyptian author, professor of sociolinguistics and Chair Department of Applied Linguistics at The American University in Cairo. In Addition, Bassiouney is the editor of the Routledge Series of Language and Identity. She is also the editor and creator of the journal Arabic Sociolinguistics Edinburgh. She has written several novels and a number of short stories and won the 2009 Sawiris Foundation Literary Prize for Young Writers for her novel Dr. Hanaa. While a substantial amount of her fiction has yet to be translated into English, her novel The Pistachio Seller was published by Syracuse University Press in 2009, and won the 2009 King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies Translation of Arabic Literature Award. Bassiouney also won Naguib Mahfouz Award from Egypt's Supreme Council for Culture in the best Egyptian novel category for her best selling novel, The Mamluk Trilogy. She was also the winner of the National Prize for Excellence in Literature of the year 2022 from the Egyptian Ministry of Culture.
The American University in Cairo Press is the leading English-language publisher in the Middle East.
The Baháʼí Faith in Egypt has existed for over 100 years. The first followers of the Baháʼí Faith arrived in Egypt in 1863. Baháʼu'lláh, founder of the religion, was himself briefly in Egypt in 1868 when on his way to imprisonment in ʻAkká. The first Egyptians were converts by 1896. Despite forming an early Baháʼí Local Spiritual Assembly and forming a National Assembly, in 1960 following a regime change the Baháʼís lost all rights as an organised religious community by Decree 263 at the decree of then-President Gamal Abdel Nasser. However, in 1963, there were still seven organized communities in Egypt. More recently the roughly 2000 or 7000 by ARDA Baháʼís of Egypt have been embroiled in the Egyptian identification card controversy from 2006 through 2009. There have been homes burned down and families driven out of towns.
The Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature is a literary award for Arabic literature. It is given to the best contemporary novel written in Arabic, but not available in English translation. The winning book is then translated into English, and published by American University in Cairo Press. It was first awarded in 1996 and is presented annually on December 11, the birthday of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, by the President of the American University in Cairo.
William Maynard Hutchins is an American academic, author and translator of contemporary Arabic literature. He was formerly a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.
Edwar al-Kharrat was an Egyptian novelist, writer and critic.
Marilyn Louise Booth is an author, scholar and translator of Arabic literature. Since 2015, she has been the Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Professor for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Angele Botros Samaan (1923-2011) was an Egyptian academic and translator.
Velvet is an Arabic language novel by Palestinian author Huzama Habayeb published in 2016. The book won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2017. The novel depicts several Palestinian women experiencing tragic love stories under the compelling circumstances and within the ultraconservative community of Baqa'a refugee camp in Jordan.
Ali bin Ahmad bin Mohammed Bakathir was an Egyptian poet, playwright and novelist of Hadrami origin, who is Indonesian-born. He was a prominent playwright, his best-known play was Epic of Omar. He had also written historical novels, the most famous being Oh Islam! and The Red Revolutionary. He is also a translator, for he translated Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. Bakathir was awarded many medals, including the State Prize of Appreciation, shared equally with Naguib Mahfouz.
Fawzia Abd Al-Minem Al-Ashmawi is an Egyptian academic, writer, and translator. She works as a Professor of Arabic Literature and Islamic Civilisation in the University of Geneva. She had won the Golden Award in Sciences and Arts from Egypt.
Samia Mehrez is an Egyptian professor of contemporary literature, literary critic, and researcher, who was born on 1 January 1955. She is President of the Center for Translation Studies at the American University in Cairo. Mehrez has played a major role in publishing articles on translation, contemporary Arab literature, post-colonial studies and various cultural topics.
Ibrahim Fathi was an Egyptian writer, intellectual and critic of the ‘60s. He was called the dean of leftist intellectuals; he has numerous articles and papers published in various Arabic and foreign periodicals. In addition, Fathi was briefly a part of HADETU. Fathi was honored in 2018 at the Supreme Council of Culture of Egypt for his intellectual output and role in enriching the intellectual life. In addition, Najib Mahfouz praised his writing by criticizing his works.
Mohamed Ali Rafie is an Egyptian novelist, screenwriter and writer, born in Al- Zahir neighborhood in Cairo in 1972. He has a number of printed story collections, the most famous of which are Honey Noun and The Possessiveness of Water. He started writing in the first joint book with two friends of his, entitled “The Path of the Pavements” and then followed it with a collection of short stories entitled “ Ibn Bahr” and a few years later another collection of short stories entitled “The Pomp of Water” and in the meantime he formed many literary groups with his writer friends.
Hussein Eid is an Egyptian writer, born in Cairo, got a bachelor's degree in commerce. He has several books in fiction and novel and he has significant books in literary translation. For the past two decades he was specialized in criticism and has 13 books such as and.
Mirrors (Al-Maraya) is Naguib Mahfouz's 1972 novel. In it, Mahfouz creates portraits of the characters. The novel does not parallel the traditional Arabic novel, for it focuses on the characters instead of the plot in an attempt to create artistic images of people who were actual contemporaries of Mahfouz. He does this by shedding the light on the secretive and known aspects of the characters' lives and closely connecting them to the plot and the plot's effect on their lives. Additionally, Mahfouz incorporates his own opinions on these characters and the political eras they lived through.
Sugar Street, first published in 1957, is the third novel in the Cairo Trilogy by Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz. In this third novel, the main character Kamal, the youngest son of Ahmad 'Abd al-Jawad who is a young child in the first and a student in the second, is a teacher.
Memory in the Flesh is a novel written by the Algerian writer Ahlam Mostaghanmi and published in Beirut in 1993. It won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for the year 1998. The editions reached 19 editions in February 2004 and, up until now, more than 3 million copies were sold worldwide. It is considered to be one of the best novels of the century because it is a wonderful, revolutionary novel that is renewed in its poetic images, its narrative history, and the momentum of its continuous events.
Mohamed Naguib Abdullah Shaaban Wafi known as Mohamed Naguib Abdullah is an Egyptian writer and physician. He has written various short stories, from which he translated his collection of short stories, Before the Death of a King, into Italian and French. In the field of medicine, he obtained his master's and doctorate degrees in the field of internal medicine from the Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University and works as a professor of internal diseases at the Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University.
