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    A Study Guide for Naguib Mahfouz's "Fountain and Tomb"
    A Study Guide for Naguib Mahfouz's "Fountain and Tomb"
    A Study Guide for Naguib Mahfouz's "Fountain and Tomb"
    Ebook56 pages35 minutes

    A Study Guide for Naguib Mahfouz's "Fountain and Tomb"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Naguib Mahfouz's "Fountain and Tomb," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535823616
    A Study Guide for Naguib Mahfouz's "Fountain and Tomb"

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      A Study Guide for Naguib Mahfouz's "Fountain and Tomb" - Gale

      13

      Fountain and Tomb

      Naguib Mahfouz

      1988

      Introduction

      Fountain and Tomb is a novel by Nobel Prizewinning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz. It was first published in Arabic in 1975 under the title Hikayat haratina and was translated into English in 1988. The novel is set in the 1910s and 1920s in the neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt, known as the Jamaliyya quarter, where Mahfouz lived with his family until 1924, when he was twelve. Mahfouz has acknowledged that the novel is autobiographical.

      In seventy-eight vignettes, each no more than a page or so, the novelist creates a vivid portrait of the joys and sorrows of the people in the neighborhood as they make their way through life. The story is mostly told from a child's point of view but sometimes switches to that of an adult looking back on his earlier experiences. The narrator, a boy who in the story is unnamed, also tells of his first experiences of love, death, and politics. The novel is an ideal introduction to the work of Mahfouz. It shows his skill as a storyteller who can create a wide range of interesting characters both good and bad within a short but imaginatively rich narrative.

      The 1988 translation of the book by Soad Sobhy, Essam Fattouh, and James Kenneson is available from Three Continents Press.

      Author Biography

      Mahfouz was born on December 11, 1911, into a middle-class family in Cairo, Egypt. He was the youngest of seven children. When Mahfouz was eight years old, in 1919, he witnessed the revolution against British rule that was to play a large role in shaping his later views. In 1934, he graduated with a degree in philosophy from King Fuad I University and entered the civil service. He wanted to become a writer and studied classic Arabic writers as well as the great writers of the West, including William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and Leo Tolstoy. His first novel was published in 1939 and translated into English under the title Khufu's Wisdom in 2003.

      In 1954, Mahfouz married Atiyyatallah Ibrahim, and they had two daughters together. Two years after his marriage, he published the first volume of his most famous work, The Cairo Trilogy, which established his reputation throughout Egypt and the Arab world. The second and third volumes were published in 1957. Mahfouz retired from the civil service in 1971 but continued to write prolifically.

      His novel Hikayat haratina (1975) was translated by Soad Sobhy, Essam Fattouh, and James Kenneson as Fountain and Tomb in 1988. His final novel, translated under the title Qushtumur Café was published in 1987. He wrote thirty-five novels in all. In the 1990s, he published two collections of short stories, bringing the number of his short-story volumes to sixteen. Throughout his career, he also published movie scripts and plays.

      In 1988, Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first Arab writer to win this prestigious prize. In the same year, he was awarded the

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