Passing of Influential Arab Writer

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has paid tribute to writer Naguib Mahfouz, who has died in Cairo at the age of 94. "Mahfouz was a cultural light... who brought Arab literature to the world," he said. Hosni Mubarak went on to say the author expressed "values of enlightenment and tolerance".

Egyptian writer Ahdaf Souief, who knew Mahfouz well, said the writer was a "massively important influence" on Arabic literature. "He was our greatest living novelist for a very long time," he said. "Mahfouz was an innovator in the use of the Arabic language. He also embodied the whole development of the Arabic novel, starting with historical novels in the late 1940s through realism, through experimentalism and so on....He single-handedly went through the whole development of the Arabic novel and made innovation possible for generations of writers after him."

The first Arab to win the Nobel prize for literature, Naguib Mahfouz published more than 30 novels, short stories, plays, newspaper columns, essays, travelogues, memoirs and political analyses during his life. His vibrant portrayal of the Egyptian capital in his Cairo Trilogy won the 1988 Nobel Prize for literature.

Adapted from BBC Online, August 2006

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