Overview

The long Egyptian struggle toward independence and freedom haunts Mahfouz’s literary canon. While the author’s own politics are usually cloaked in fiction, these brief essays clarify his unwavering belief in democracy, civilisation, tolerance and justice. These articles were published in al-Ahram newspaper in the tumultuous wake of Sadat’s assassination, as Mubarak’s early presidency survived an uprising in 1984, and then a mutiny in 1986. As such, they not only testify to Mahfouz’s developing convictions but to the daily life and convulsions of the nation in which they formed. The six years covered in the book were the last in which Mahfouz was active as a force in modern literature. While writing these essays, Mahfouz published, among other works, The Journey of Ibn Fattouma, and The Day the Leader Was Killed, finally bringing his work as a novelist to a close in 1988 with his last novel, The Coffee House. Essays of the Early Mubarak Era is the third of four volumes in which Mahfouz’s non-fiction work is translated into English for the first time.

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Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) was the greatest Arab writer of the twentieth century. Born in the old Islamic Quarter of Cairo in 1911, he began writing when he was seventeen before entering university to study as a student of philosophy in 1930. He is the author of over thirty novels. In 1988 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Rasheed El-Enany is the Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities and Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. He is also Professor Emeritus of Modern Arabic Literature, University of Exeter, where he became Director of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. He has authored several books on Naguib Mahfouz, including Naguib Mahfouz: His Life and Times. Russell Harris holds an MA in Oriental Studies from Balliol College, Oxford, and is an established translator of literary works from French and Arabic. He is a contributor to The Encyclopedia Islamica for the Institute of Ismaili Studies and has written many articles on Middle Eastern art for  international journals and magazines. 

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