Najib Mahfouz

Everyone has a hero, a person that you respect, you consider your example. Mine is Najib Mahfouz. Najib Mahfouz is an Egyptian novelist, the most famous one in Arabic literature. His biography, his political views and his works made him a huge author in this period. And because of his works, he carries on helping Arab community to discover many realities.

Najib Mahfouz was born in 1911 in Cairo. He started writing in his seventies and published his work in a diary. First of all, he tried to report Egyptian history but he didn’t succeed so much. No one was interested by this part of Egypt’s history at this time. He decided to relate the history of Egypt at the period of WWII because everything was going bad in his country. And he decided to defy politicians and tell all about the situation in Egypt and also in the Arab world. He was describing the situation in this world and all the upset that touched his community. Najib Mahfouz is Arab’s most popular writer and also the literary conscience of his community. He knew how to relate to his public all about the crisis in his country and allowed to many involving on this situation. Like Gandhi, he fought for tolerance and peace. He obtained the Nobel Prize of literature in 1988.

During WWII, the situation was going bad. The Arab-Israeli conflict was a disaster for Egypt because it was participating in this conflict. This situation made Najib Mahfouz upset ; he denounced all the enemies. For him, the enemies for humanity were « poverty, ignorance, disease and dictatorship ». Although a Muslim himself , Mahfouz deeply mistrusts fundamentalist Muslims. He wrote in 1959 an allegorical tale, "Children of our quarter" (Children of Gebelawi), that perturbed them so much. In October 1994 a young fundamentalist Muslim tried to kill him, an act of vengeance for his anti-fundamentalist attitudes. But Najib Mahfouz didn’t give up his action. Making writing his career, he offered to humanity literature but also bloody realities. He still fought for good reasons without spilling blood ; only with his pen he succeeded in making his community think about change.