CAIRO: Egyptian novelist Khairy Shalaby passed away on Friday after suffering a fatal heart attack at his home in Cairo. Shalaby was 73. He was the recipient of many prestigious Egyptian awards and his books have been translated into over 8 languages. He received the State Merit Award in the Arts in 2005 and the AUC's Naguib Mahfouz award in 2003. Many of his novels were turned into TV series and films including the novel ‘Sareq al-Farah,” or, “The Joy Thief,” directed by prominent director Dawood Abdel Saied and Wekalet Atiya and Atiya's agency turned it into a TV show in 2009. Shalaby had over 70 books published ranging between short stories, novellas, critical studies and novels. A son of the the leading literature movements of the 1960s, his style of writing remained accessible to many, which gained him a wide audience around the Arabic reading world with him being the leader of the historical fantastical style that he constructed in his novels such as al-Saniora, The Crown Mule and al-Shotar, or “The Clever Ones.” BM
