SOURCE: “Naguib Mahfouz: The Art of Fiction CXXIX,” in Paris Review, Vol. 34, No. 123, Summer, 1992, pp. 50–73.

In the following interview, Mahfouz discusses the role of politics and religion in his life and work, his attitude toward censorship, and his reaction to winning the Nobel Prize.

Naguib Mahfouz credits Hafiz Najib—thief, jailbird, renowned cop baiter and author of twenty-two detective novels—with being his earliest literary influence. The ten-year-old Mahfouz read Najib's Johnson's Son on the recommendation of an elementary school classmate, and the experience, Mahfouz avows, changed his life.

Mahfouz's subsequent influences have been many and various. In high school Mahfouz became preoccupied with Taha Husayn, whose revolutionary critical work. Fil-shi‘r al-Jahili, provoked a hysterical reaction from conservative Asharite circles when it was published in 1926. In college Mahfouz read Salama Musa, who as the editor of the magazine al-Majalla al-Jadida later published Mahfouz's first novel, and from...