More on Mahfouz

Edward Said remembers Mahfouz in Counterpunch.

To have taken history not only seriously but also literally is the central achievement of Mahfouz's work and, as with Tolstoy or Solzhenitsyn, one gets the measure of his literary personality by the sheer audacity and even the overreaching arrogance of his scope. To articulate large swathes of Egypt's history on behalf of that history, and to feel himself capable of presenting its citizens for scrutiny as its representatives: this sort of ambition is rarely seen in contemporary writers.