# The Postcolonial Book Club - Naguib Mahfouz ### Sugar Street (1957) **Naguib Mahfouz rarely left the alleyways of Cairo, yet few writers captured the sweep of a nation as truly.** He is not quite a household name, but, if anybody has an interest in Egypt’s often turbulent history throughout the twentieth century, Naguib Mahfouz can be considered one of the country’s literary lionhearts, a titan of Middle Eastern and African literature. One might consider Mahfouz to have lived a relatively normal life. Born into a middle-class family in Cairo’s al-Gamaliya district in 1911 underneath the minaret of the al-Hussain mosque, like his books, he seldom left the busy alleyways of Egypt’s capital. A long career as a middle-ranking civil servant (the Egyptian public sector is believed to directly employ up to seven million people even today) did not stand in the way of the prolific output to which his writings amount. 35 novels, over 350 short stories, 26 screenplays and seven plays alongside his journalistic writings … these are no mean figures and that is where the more extraordinary details of his life begin to reveal themselves. Examples of social realism, especially in prose forms like the novel, had been sparse up to that point in the landscape of Egypt’s literature. Mahfouz was the first – and remains the only – Arab writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1988, the Swedish Academy noting that he ‘has formed an Egyptian narrative art that applies to all mankind’. An assassination attempt was made on his life in 1994 five years after Ruhollah Khomeini issued a _fatwa_ against Salman Rushdie, the author of _[The Satanic Verses](https://amzn.to/3ZvczHQ)_. Stabbed several times in the neck, Mahfouz had criticised the novel as insulting, but also defended Rushdie’s freedom to expression. Moreover, he suffered at the hands of censors throughout his career: his 1959 work _[Children of Gebelawi](https://amzn.to/4ceeJmI)_ was banned across much of the Arabic-speaking world. The book’s allegorical depictions of the three Abrahamic faiths’ history which played out in the streets of Old Cairo encountered forceful religious opposition and would only be published in Egypt four months after Mahfouz’s death in 2006 at the age of 94. The pre-war Egypt Mahfouz was born into was still run by the British as a khedivate and the political change he would witness and document in his writings was profound, spanning the period of his nation’s independence, near-invasion by Axis forces, eventual decolonisation before the premierships of Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak. His career, working mostly in the Ministry of Islamic Endowments and other cultural posts, brought him expertise of how Egypt functioned as a state, an instinct for progressive politics and a keen awareness of Cairo’s social strata. His philosophical ambitions transformed to literary ones after university, but the characters he writes retain so much of his own leanings toward existentialism and moral thought. His best-known work among Western readers is The Cairo Trilogy – _[Palace Walk](https://amzn.to/3ZXosGy)_, _[Palace of Desire](https://amzn.to/4qmsu67)_ and _[Sugar Street](https://amzn.to/46CUaww)_ – the last of which I read in January, Egypt being the first of my destinations in 2026’s literary tour of Africa. The trio of novels chronicle three generations of the al-Jawad family, from the tyrannical merchant el-Sayyid Ahmad, his introspective teacher-philosopher son Kamal and three grandsons, each of them at odds with each other. The transformation of Egypt is the central focus of the splendid narrative, which spans the years prior to World War One and takes the reader into the 1950s and addresses themes such as the changing role of women, marriage, homosexuality, class-based society and, of course, politics. It is the work of an innovator, a pleasure to sit down and read, and a sumptuous glimpse into the history of one of the world’s ‘great’ cities and the life within. My reading project in 2026 is a ‘tour’ of African literature, _The Postcolonial Book Club_ as I’ve dubbed it. I intend to read, research and review a novel a month from twelve countries, some of which I have visited, others that I plan to over 2026. So far, the loose criteria are such that the title ( **a**) must be first published after 1945, ( **b**) include or make reference to colonial or postcolonial themes, and ( **c**) be written by an author born in that country or a colony that preceded it. I am still on the hunt for recommendations for a handful of countries if anybody has any ideas. So far the reading list looks like this: - Egypt - _Sugar Street_ by Naguib Mahfouz (1957) - Ethiopia - _Beneath The Lion’s Gaze_ by Maaza Mengiste (2010) - Tanzania - _Afterlives_ by Abdulrazak Gurnah (2020) - Zimbabwe - _Harare North_ by Brian Chikwava (2009) - South Africa - _My Traitor’s Heart_ by Rian Malan (1990) - Ghana - _The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born_ by Ayi Kwei Armah (1968) - Malawi - Zambia - Lesotho - Mozambique - Eswatini - Senegal This month, I have begun _[Beneath The Lion’s Gaze](https://amzn.to/4bFFbFF)_, Maaza Mengiste’s retelling of the Ethiopian Revolution through the eyes of a doctor and his family. If any subscribers are keen to get involved and read these titles in sync, please get in touch!