Essays of his Later Years

Although he had largely stopped writing fiction by the end of the 1980s, Naguib Mahfouz continued to pen essays for al-Ahram newspaper, offering letters of advice and reflection to his beloved Egyptian public. His steady outpouring was not to be stopped until his attempted assassination in 1994, when a young man, in the grip of religious extremism, stabbed the author in the neck.

In the years approaching the attack, Mahfouz wrote with empathy and forgiveness for those who turn in desperation to terrorism. These remarkably prescient essays display a mature and measured reaction to the increasingly violent world Mahfouz perceived around him. With their unwavering commitment to tolerance, democracy, and hope in dark times, his essays feel as pertinent today as they were thirty years ago.

Essays of His Later Years is the last of four volumes in which Mahfouz’s non-fiction is translated into English for the first time.