CAIRO - To celebrate the centenary of the birth of the great Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, the American University in Cairo (AUC) Press, is organising an exhibition entitled ‘Naguib Mahfouz: His Life and Work'. The AUC Press has been publishing English translations of Mahfouz's work since 1978, and now, to mark the occasion, has published a special commemorative limited edition of all his novels, three collections of short stories, and his autobiographical writings in a single library of 20 hardbound volumes. This Naguib Mahfouz Centennial Library includes all thirty-five of his novels, from Khufu's Wisdom, first published in Arabic in 1939, to his last work of extended fiction, The Coffeehouse (1988), together with 38 short stories. It also contains his Echoes of an Autobiography, his exquisite late series of very short fictions The Dreams, and the collection of his weekly newspaper columns, Naguib Mahfouz at Sidi Gaber. The event, which is being held at the AUC Downtown campus on Tahrir Square, runs until December 11. It also features dozens of pictures of Mahfouz with his family and friends, as well as original foreign-edition covers of Mahfouz's books, and Arabic and English-language newspaper articles. In addition this centennial exhibition displays letters from emirs and presidents he knew and quotations from the writings and sayings of well-known Egyptian and foreign figures about him. Personal belongings of this iconic Egyptian are also presented. Mahfouz (December 11, 1911 ��" August 30, 2006) is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, who explored themes of existentialism. He published over 40 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of film scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films. Prior to his death, Mahfouz was the oldest living Nobel Literature laureate and the third oldest laureate of all time, coming after only British philosopher Bertrand Russell and Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness. At the time of his death, he was the only Arabic-language writer to have won the Nobel Prize, which he was awarded in 1988.
