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Michael Beard and Adnan Hayda, eds., Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993. 208 pp., including Bibliography, Map, and Index. Hardcover $32.50.
Rasheed El-Enany. Naguib Mahfouz: The Pursuit of Meaning. London: Routledge, 1993. 271 pp., including Bibliography and Index. Hardcover $59.95 paper $21.50.
Several months after Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1988, an Arab American linguist at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan organized an international conference on the life and work of Mahfouz. The event filled the University's conference facilities to capacity with scholars and members of Detroit's populous Arab American community. Despite timely press releases, however, neither of Detroit's two major newspapers reported on the proceedings. One feature editor explained that he considered the Nobel committee's choice of Mahfouz as a means of placating the "Third World," and, consequently, viewed the conference as much ado about very little. When pressed, the editor admitted he had never read anything by the Egyptian author.
It is precisely such cultural dissonance that Michael Beard and Adnan Haydar directly confront in their anthology Naguib Mahfouz: From Relational Fame to Global Recognition. Four of the twelve articles in the collection analyze traditional European and American perceptions of Arab literature and...