The youngest child of a minor civil servant, Mahfouz's mother named him after the physician who delivered him. He was born in Sayyidna Al-Husayn district of Al-Gamaliyya neighbourhood of old Cairo, and in fact spent virtually his entire life in two neighbourhoods in Cairo. He would wake up at 4:00am, work till 7:00am, go out for a walk, have breakfast at his favourite Ali Baba café where he would read the morning newspapers, and then return home to write for two additional hours.

Although Mahfouz rarely travelled outside Cairo, let alone Egypt, he wrote one novel after another and became the spokesperson of his generation, a generation scattered over 22 nations. Mahfouz's almost single-handed effort evolved and established Arabic prose, especially the novel, in the form and manner we see it today.

A towering figure in the Arab universe, but virtually unknown outside it, even writing this modest profile of Naguib Mahfouz feels akin to containing an underground fountain.

Where does one start and where does one end? Nearly twenty years on, Mahfouz is still the only Arab to have won the Nobel Prize in literature although storytelling has been a favourite pasttime of the Arabs from the dawn of written history. And this storytelling transcends religions and cultural boundaries within the Arab world to include such names such as Orhan Pamuk, Amin Maalouf, and Yusuf Idris, to name a few in modern times, or going back to the "masters," in Kahlil Gibran, Al-Aqqad, Al-Mazni, Taha Husayn and Tawfiq Al-Hakim, who laid the foundations of modern Arabic prose.

The novel as a whole is a recent phenomenon in world literature compared to poetry and plays. The novel as a genre is considered to be essentially a creature of, by and for the urban middle class. It is here that Mahfouz's life and time in Cairo paved the way for him to become the chronicler of this crowded metropolis and form a bridge between the present and the past, the living and the dead.

As a young boy, Mahfouz witnessed the 1919 revolution where some of the clashes with the British took place in the very square he lived. In 1930, Mahfouz entered the University of Cairo as a philosophy student. He abandoned his MA studies after he decided to pursue a career in writing. While at university, Mahfouz was exposed to the works of Zola, Balzac, Tolstoy, Dickens and Walter Scott.

Novels were virtually unknown in Arabic literature before the twentieth century. This is extremely surprising and ironic because Arabic literature was able to create the magical Arabian Nights in the narratives of Shahrazade. Nevertheless, by the beginning of the twentieth century the Arabic novel had started to emerge, but was a sleeping beauty waiting for it to be kissed by Naguib Mahfouz.

The works of Taha Husain, Ibrahim Al-Mazini, Mahmud Tahir Lashin and Tawfiq Al-Hakim laid the foundations of the modern Arabic novel. Although their works established new genres in Arabic literature, they were limited in their scope, mostly because, except for Lashin, the others experimented with various genres. Mahfouz, however, concentrated on novels for most of his career. His other areas of interest include short stories, plays, and scripts for TV and cinema.

In 1938, Mahfouz published his first book, Hams Al-Junun (Whispers of Madness), which was a collection of short stories. In 1939, he published his first novel Abath Al-Aqdar (Absurd Fates). Mahfouz was fascinated by the historical novels of Walter Scott, and embarked on a similar project to link Pharaonic Egypt with the present, thus link the living with the dead.

By the time Mahfouz finished his first three novels, all based on ancient Egypt, he was not the only person who had written a historical novel in Arabic. However, what separated him from the rest is that his novels were radically different in their structural consistency and artistic standards. Mahfouz used the past to form the basis to look into the future -- in the past lay the seeds of the future. Metaphoric representations expressed the quest for independence to establish the individual's role in the society. However, World War II and its effect on the Egyptian society, Mahfouz's own urban experience in Cairo, and his exposure to the works of nineteenth-century European novelists forced him to switch his focus to the present.

In 1943, Mahfouz published Al-Qahirah Al-Jadidah (The New Cairo). This was the first of four novels that were to focus on urban, present-day Cairo. These novels evolved around the physical and cultural transformation of Cairo from the beginning of the twentieth century, around the tension between the old and the new. They were a watershed in Arabic literature. For the first time, the Arabic novel was successfully written within an urban setting. Zuqaq Al-Midaqq (Midaq Alley, 1946) skillfully negotiates the tension between traditionalism and modernity based on Midaq Alley, and revolving around its central character, Hamidah. Mahfouz cleverly uses Hamidah as a metaphor for Egypt. If Mahfouz's published novels from the 1940s were path-breaking, the magnum opus was still in the offing: The Cairo Trilogy.

This trilogy deals with the traditional subject matter of novels mentioned at the beginning here: preserving the experiences of the urban middle class. It can be termed as an extended poem that narrates the decline of patriarchy in Egypt between 1917 and 1944, Egypt's struggle to come to terms with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the nationalist movements of 1919 (Palace Walk), the British Negotiation of 1924 (Palace of Desire), and political events between 1935 and 1944 (Sugar Street).

Mahfouz published six novels and collection of short stories between 1961 and 1967. These were all experimental and influenced mainly by the works of Jean Paul Sartre. Al-Liss Wa Al-Kilab (The Thief and the Dogs, 1961) narrates a story of a person driven mad by the desire for revenge. Al-Summan Wa Al-Kharif (Autumn Quail, 1962) addresses Nasser's failure to rehabilitate intellectuals of the Old Regime. Miramar (Miramar, 1967) is Mahfouz's outcome of the spiritual crisis he found himself in after the "humiliating" Six Day War.

During the late 1970s, Mahfouz's work came under attack for his support for the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. However, the masses kept on reading his books. In 1985, he went back to his "Pharaonic" roots with the publication of Al-A'ish Fi Al-Haqiqah (Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth) where he narrates the life of a Pharaoh through the eyes of people who knew him years after the Pharaoh dies.

The crowning glory for Mahfouz and the Arab world came in 1988 when Mahfouz was declared the Nobel Prize Winner for Literature. Mahfouz's first comments after he heard that he had won the prize will echo in anybody's mind, "My Masters deserved it more than me" referring to Al-Aqqad, Al-Mazni, Taha Husayn and Tawfiq Al-Hakim. The Nobel Prize, however, didn't come without its troubles. Mahfouz's acceptance of the Nobel Prize from the West, his condemnation of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and further events led to him becoming the target of a street attack during which he was stabbed twice in the neck in 1994. Mahfouz was 83 at the time. Although he narrowly survived, it didn't stop him from living up to his nickname of "Omega" for the unvarying and predictable nature of his daily schedule.

Where does one start? In fact, we haven't started at all. The depth and breadth of the persona associated with Naguib Mahfouz is too immense to be fully caught within this narrative. Like all great storytellers, Mahfouz helps us escape into a magical parallel world, a world that is our home. A world where anything is possible, like the Arabian Nights or the Chronicles of Narnia. And when we finally realise we have to get back, we just slip on our ruby slippers and say, "take me back home".

But the magic doesn't simply end here. It's the depth of his metaphor and allegory that transcends Mahfouz beyond his native Cairo and the Arab world. It is here where Mahfouz's genius rests. Egypt will never be able to produce another pyramid. Egypt may never be able to produce another Naguib Mahfouz. And, like the Sphinx, his legacy will continue to protect and haunt all Arabia for as long as we can tell.

Mahfouz Naguib in his own words
"My position on everything I have read throughout my life and my readings include the Ancient Egyptian and Arabic heritage as well as English and French creative workswas, as far as possible, a neutral, unbiased, one. This in the sense that all these cultures are, in the last analysis, human cultures, produced by man, and I am as entitled to the English (literary) heritage as I am to the Pharaonic heritage. In other words, all these cultures belong to me in my capacity as a human being. And if you were to ask me to enumerate my favourite works in order, you might find among them an Ancient Egyptian work, a French one, a third that is Arabic and a fourth that is English. When I read I allow my self to love what seems worthy of love, regardless of nationality."

Asrar Chowdhury teaches Economics at Jahangirnagar University.