A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

20 Years Ago Today: Assassination Attempt on Naguib Mahfouz

Twenty years ago today, on October 14, 1994, a radical Islamist attempted to assassinate the great Egyptian novelist and Nobel Prize for Literature winner Naguib Mahfouz as he sat in his car. He had a slow and difficult recovery and suffered the effects until his death at 94 in 2006.

Stock with Mahfouz in the hospital
On the 100th anniversary of Mahfouz' birth in 2011, I interviewed Raymond Stock, who has translated several of Mahfouz' works into English and who is writing his biography. He discussed Mahfouz' recovery and the trial of the accused at some length in this post, which may be worth revisiting on this anniversary.

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