Essays on Literature and Philosophy

'At this time in the 21st century when reactionary and fundamentalist religious currents are forcefully asserting themselves wherever one looks, it is wonderful to read these essays on art and culture, on love, on democracy, on Umm Kulthum, on Philosophy, on psychology, written when the Arab world's only Nobel Laureate in Literature was a young man, and showing that the humanity and depth of his literary oeuvre was part and parcel of his tolerant, open-minded and secularist world view.'- Margaret Obank, Banipal

As a citizen, Naguib Mahfouz sees civility and the continuity of a transnational, abiding, Egyptian personality in his work as perhaps surviving the debilitating processes of conflict and historical degeneration which he, more than anyone else I have read, has so powerfully depicted. Edward Said"

One of the greatest creative talents in the realm of the novel in the world. Nadine Gordimer"

"These essays . . . give fascinating context to a great novelist's oeuvre, while also shedding light on the interests of literate Egyptians in the early 1930s." Marcia Lynx Qualey, Qantara

"Mahfouz has been associated in the western imagination as his country's great cosmopolitan secularist, a quiet critic of patriarchy and a reasoned voice against the gathering forces of Islamist revivalism. . . . Western readers have historically only had the novels to go by, in situating Mahfouz in the context of Egypt's mid-century transformations. It is only with the English publication of On Literature and Philosophy, the first volume of Mahfouz's non-fiction writing, that there is a body of journalism and essays through which to trace Mahfouz's intellectual journey." Financial Times

"Mahfouz embodied the essence of what makes the bruising, raucous, chaotic human anthill of Cairo possible." Economist

"He is not only a Hugo and a Dickens, but also a Galsworthy, a Mann, a Zola, and a Jules Romain." London Review of Books

"Perhaps best known as a novelist, Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz was a prolific commentator on extraliterary issues, both national and international. On Literature and Philosophy: The Non-Fiction Writing of Naguib Mahfouz collects, for the first time in English translation, a representative selection of his early essays on topics ranging from philosophy in the pre-Socratic era to artistic imagery in the Koran. . . . The anthology provides important insights into mid-twentieth-century currents of thought that informed the acclaimed author's subsequent novels. Dating in large part to the 1930s and 1940s, the essays highlight the consequential influence of European philosophy on the evolution of Arabic intellectual history. According to El-Enany, if Mahfuz "had not been a great novelist, he would have been a great teacher.". . . Recommended."
Choice

"The books offer a fascinating insight into how the writer processed and responded to the sometimes-tumultuous events his country faced during these times." Aramco Magazine