On this day in 1911 the Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz was born. He was the author of some forty novels and story collections, and estimated to be the most read Arabic novelist both outside of and within the Arab world -- though some of his books were ominously banned, and remain so. His epic social chronicles -- most notably the Cairo Trilogy, which covers much of the first half of the 20th century -- are compared to, and were in fact written in emulation of, those by Dickens, Tolstoy and Balzac ... FULL STORY »
