Nejib Mahfouz ( Arabic : نجيب محفوظ , Cairo , December 11, 1911 - August 30, 2006 ), was an Egyptian writer.

Mahfuz began writing at the age of seventeen and has so far published more than 40 short stories and 30 screenplays. The Cairo Trilogy ( 1956 , 1957 ) is a masterpiece. In 1959 . publishes "Sons of our neighborhood" which is banned in Egypt due to blasphemy. This book is considered to be the reason for the assassination of Mahfuz in 1994 . year, after which Mahfuz was under constant escort by bodyguards. [1]

He won the Egyptian decoration "Necklace of the Nile" and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1988) and thus became the first Arab writer to receive this award.