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In 1994, six years after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz survived a knife attack by a religious extremist. Nerve damage made writing slow and difficult, and he could work only briefly each day. His late collection The Dreams gathered very short pieces first published in a Cairo magazine.

Naguib Mahfouz / Nobel Prize / American University in Cairo Press

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Mahfouz, born in Cairo in 1911, wrote more than thirty novels, and in 1988 he became the first Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Some Islamists had long condemned his allegorical novel Children of Gebelawi, serialised in 1959, as blasphemous, and it was banned in most of the Arab world for decades. Death threats followed, including one from the militant cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman. On 14 October 1994 a young man stabbed the 82-year-old writer in the neck outside his home, damaging the nerves of his right arm. Sixteen people were tried by a military court, and two were hanged. Mahfouz kept working, dictating when he could not write, and the pieces of The Dreams appeared in the Cairo weekly Nisf al-Dunya. He died in 2006.

Türkçe oku
Mısırlı romancı Necib Mahfuz, Nobel Edebiyat Ödülü'nü aldıktan altı yıl sonra, 1994'te köktendinci bir saldırganın bıçaklı saldırısından sağ kurtuldu. Sinirleri zarar gördüğü için yazmak zorlaştı; günde ancak kısa süre çalışabiliyordu. Son dönem kitabı Düşler, önce Kahire'de bir dergide yayımlanan çok kısa metinlerden oluşur.

1911'de Kahire'de doğan Mahfuz otuzu aşkın roman yazdı ve 1988'de Nobel Edebiyat Ödülü'nü alan ilk Arapça yazar oldu. Bazı İslamcılar, 1959'da tefrika edilen alegorik romanı Children of Gebelawi'yi (Arapça adıyla Evlâdu Hâretinâ) yıllardır dine hakaret sayıyordu; kitap Arap dünyasının büyük bölümünde onlarca yıl yasaklı kaldı. Ardından ölüm tehditleri geldi; bunlardan biri de radikal din adamı Ömer Abdurrahman'dandı. 14 Ekim 1994'te genç bir adam, 82 yaşındaki yazarı evinin önünde boynundan bıçakladı; saldırı sağ kolunun sinirlerine zarar verdi. On altı kişi askerî mahkemede yargılandı, ikisi idam edildi. Mahfuz çalışmayı bırakmadı; yazamadığında dikte ettirdi. Düşler'i oluşturan metinler Kahire'de yayımlanan haftalık Nisf al-Dunya dergisinde çıktı. Mahfuz 2006'da öldü.

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