The Writer Becomes Text: Naguib Mahfouz and State Nationalism in Egypt

In October of 1994, Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt's respected octogenarian Nobel Laureate, fell victim to an assassination attempt outside his home in Cairo. The outpouring of support for the aging writer during his convalescence eventually evolved into a discourse that reflected the way the Egyptian State had been complicit all along in making the writer a symbol for the regime. Ultimately, the packaging of Mahfouz by the Egyptian government made him an embodiment of the exploited and powerless Third World intellectual in the era of globalization.