CAIRO - Naguib Mahfouz achieved worldwide literary fame because of his universality, although, according to the literati, recognition by the West of his exceptionality and greatness came too late. Mahfouz was born in December 1911 in el-Gamalyia district, a traditional Cairo quarter. The Nobel laureate loved listening to the people's stories on which he drew for his famous novels that inspired the whole world later on. Renowned Egyptian writer Gamal el-Ghitani recently gave a ‘Nobel Prize and the Road to Universality' lecture to celebrate the Naguib Mahfouz Centennial in the American University in Cairo (AUC), in co-operation with the Swedish Embassy in Cairo. He stated that although Mahfouz started writing in the early 1930s, it was not until he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988 that he gained worldwide recognition. "In 1987, I visited East Germany and was surprised to find some of its writers telling me that Mahfouz's novel Adrift on the Nile was an expression of their plight under socialist rule," recounted el-Ghitani. "I asked in bewilderment: “What could possibly be the relationship between you and a group of Egyptians smoking hash in a houseboat on the Nile?'" The link, according to el-Ghatani, was their respective isolation and despair. The Mahfouz characters in Midaq Alley became universal as they present humanitarian themes that touch the heart of Western readers, after which they became aware of the novel's specific details and deep issues stemming from the use of very traditional Egyptian characters. On his journey to Mexico in 1992, el-Ghitani, who considers Mahfouz as his master, remarked that he was astonished when he found that Midaq Alley had been turned into a Mexican film. Considered by many to be Mahfouz's best novel, the universal and timeless Midaq Alley centres on the residents of one of the hustling, teeming back-alleys of Cairo. The work follows the intertwined stories of several characters who share little more than their aspirations to affluence, romantic entanglements – and an address.
