SOURCE: “Naguib Mahfouz: A Translator's View,” in Kenyon Review, Vol. 23, No. 2, Spring, 2001, pp. 136–42.

In the following essay, Stock offers an analysis of Mahfouz's works that are set in ancient times, including Children of Gebelawi and “A Voice from the Other World.”

Naguib Mahfouz, who in 1988 became the first Arab Nobel Laureate in Literature, has published roughly sixty books, covering virtually every style and genre of fiction. His subject has always been mankind's fate, depicted (with very rare exceptions) in scenes from his native Egypt. Though his themes are modern—or more properly, universal—entombed in the mass of Mahfouz's oeuvre is a small, tragically neglected body of works set in, or using devices from, the age of the Pharaohs.

Naguib Mahfouz ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Ibrahim Ahmad al-Basha was born at 2:00 A.M. on December 10, 1911 (though his birth was registered—and is still celebrated—on December 11), into a middle-class...