SOURCE: “Homosexuality in the Early Novels of Nageeb Mahfouz,” in Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 26, No. 4, January, 1994, pp. 77–90.

In the following essay, Matar discusses the controversy surrounding the homosexuality and homosexual issues that Mahfouz portrays in several of his novels.

Upon the publication of Midaq Alley in 1947, Nageeb Mahfouz became the first writer in modern Arabic to present in his fiction a depiction of the homosexual protagonist. A few years later, Mahfouz completed Sukariyya in the “Trilogy” (published however in 1957), in which he again portrayed homosexual relationship. No other writer had dealt with this topic since the Renaissance of Arabic literature in the 19th century, and only a few have touched upon it since Mahfouz.¹ Mahfouz's choice of homosexuality is noteworthy because the topic is deeply objectionable to the Islamic tradition in which the novels and their author are rooted. In the Koran (7: 80–81), as well as in the Hadiths...