In writer's work, a vanishing Arab world

But it was a decision much appreciated by Islamists. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement mourning his passing and praising him as a pious man. "A lot of the things he wrote were wrong, but his agreement with Al Azhar not to publish that blasphemous work was a sign he understood his mistake,'' says Abd al-Munim Abu al-Futuh, a member of the Brotherhood's guidance council.

The attack left the then 83-year-old Mahfouz unable to grasp a pen for years, though it didn't end his hunger for contact with his other friends and writers. Until the last months of his life, he still kept up his weekly salons, his wry and self-effacing presence the glue that held together a dwindling number of Egyptian intellectuals.

"He was the most hail fellow, well-met sort of person that you could imagine,'' says Stock.

In his final years, says Stock, Mr. Mahfouz was a supporter of Mubarak, going so far as to publicly endorse him for president in the country's last election, and the government in turn embraced him as a popular figure whose glory they hoped would reflect upon them. That was a sharp turn from his views on Mubarak's immediate predecessor Anwar Sadat, who was murdered by Islamists for his peace deal with Israel.

Mahfouz loathed Mr. Sadat for his infitah, or open door, policy that reduced the role of the state in Egypt's economy and in providing social welfare, and allowed for more foreign and private investment. He saw the policy as a betrayal of the socialism that Egypt needed, and as the unintentional fuel for the rise of militant Islam.

In his short novel "The Day the President was Killed,'' focusing on a poor family in the days before Sadat's assassination, he chronicles the hardships and disillusion created by the government's economic failures, how so many Egyptians and Arabs have been left feeling adrift in a modern age that has yielded few fruits.

But while still critical of those economic policies that Mubarak carried forward, he saw Egypt's current leader as offering the best possible course. "I think he was very practical-minded,'' says Stock. "He saw Mubarak as building on the best of Sadat with his more grandiose excesses. During his time in power, Egypt had not fallen apart against great odds and Mubarak didn't participate in any foreign adventures."

Nevertheless, the author never gave up on his socialist ideas, or his ties to the people of Cairo's streets – even as the bars and cafes of his youth were either given over to the tourist trade, or vanished altogether.

1911 - Born in Cairo.

1939 - First novel, "Mockery of the Fates," published.

1956-57 - Famous Cairo trilogy ("Palace Walk," "Palace of Desire," and "Sugar Street") is published.

1959 - Controversial "Children of the Alley" serialized in Egyptian newspapers. Egyptian authorities banned book from publication.

1972 - Among his positions as a civil servant were Director of Censorship in the Bureau of Art and as consultant on Cultural Affairs to the Ministry of Culture.

1988 - Awarded Nobel Prize in literature.

1994 - An attacker stabbed Mahfouz in his neck, damaging nerves.

2005 - "The Seventh Heaven," a collection of stories about the afterlife, is published.

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