Naguib Mahfouz, the Arab world's only Nobel Laureate (1988), is far and away the most celebrated and surely the most widely read modern Arab author in translation. Nathaniel Greenberg has chosen an intriguing – and ambitious – approach to exploring the literary production of the great master. He seeks to explore Mahfouz's “revolutionary aesthetic” by examining both his novels and his substantial output of film scripts penned between the onset of Nasser's Free Officers movement in 1952 and the naksa/setback of June 1967.
What makes the project most intriguing is that in the early 1950s, on the heels of his magisterial “Dickensian” novels, Mahfouz began to devote increasing energies to work on a series of equally influential screenplays. Greenberg, echoing the Egyptian film critic Samir Farid, refers to this as a “parallel” career (p. 16, n. 8). Some were adaptations of major literary works by different authors (Mahfouz left the adaptations of his own stories to others), and some were original scripts. All became popular hits that form part of the great film canon of the early Nasser era. Some helped define the careers of a new generation of film makers and actors, particularly the leading director of social melodrama, Salah Abu Sayf.
Somewhat precipitately, in 1959 Mahfouz published another, very different, large novel, the religious-historical allegory, Children of the Alley. The book was denounced by al-Azhar and published in Beirut (Mahfouz never allowed it to be published in Egypt without Azhar's approval and years later it became the rationale for an attempt on his life). Then in the 1960s Mahfouz reinvented himself, penning a second round of masterworks, shorter novels, less descriptive and focused on dialogue, that are in many ways reminiscent of screenplays.
Greenberg is thus on solid ground when he argues that Mahfouz's work in cinema was “integral to his subsequent literary output” (p. xvi) and a “bridge between his pre- and post-revolutionary work” (pp. 2–3). Why he moved in this direction and how it really impacted him remains unclear. Greenberg has a tendency throughout this study to eschew biographical investigation in favour of critical speculation. It would be nice to hear the subject speak more, as he did so often in his later years, to his own life experience and “changing rhythm” (to borrow a phrase from Sasson Somekh, one of his early foreign admirers).
This is a slim volume, and as such raises more questions than it leaves room to answer. What really drew Mahfouz to the cinema? Why does it not play a prominent role in his fiction? What was the nature of his collaboration with fellow writers like Bayrum al-Tunsi or with the cineaste Abu Sayf, who was himself deeply engaged in plotting the stories of many of his best early films? To what extent was the finished product the result of Mahfouz's vision or that of the director, cinematographer and film editor – or the personas of charismatic star players like Farid Shawqi? Why did Mahfouz shift gears to script romantic melodramas, however politically laced, like Ihsan Abd al-Quddus' I am Free? What about films that do not fit the twin foci on crime and modern women, such as the masterful Between Heaven and Earth? Why did Mahfouz suddenly stop writing scripts and return to writing novels and short stories?
Some of these are perhaps unfair questions, beyond the purview of the work under review. But I think it is fair to push back on the question of just how revolutionary Mahfouz's aesthetics, from a political perspective, really were, especially because Greenberg reads Mahfouz as disenchanted from very early on, describing Nasser allegorically in the mid-1950s as a conductor on a runaway train (p. 46). Greenberg gives particular prominence to the disillusioned social rebel in The Thief and the Dogs, published in 1961 (and adapted into an important film a year later, although not by Mahfouz).
Nonetheless, Mahfouz spent two decades deeply engaged with filmmakers who were leading Egypt into a new forward-looking era, and he played an important part within the state film sector (as did Abu Sayf). His works often betray a cynicism for dishonest revolutionaries and political hacks, but was that a condemnation of the revolution and its leaders or of those who subverted it from within?
To really understand Mahfouz's “revolutionary aesthetic” one needs to carry the story beyond 1967. This would hold true for any major Arab artist or intellectual, but the naksa represents a key moment for Mahfouz and had major repercussions on Egyptian cinema, ushering in a phase when state censors allowed a far more direct critique of the Nasserist state. Adaptations of some of Mahfouz's most important works were among the most influential films produced at the time: Autumn Quail, Adrift on the Nile and Miramar. Mahfouz wrote these stories prior to June 1967, but all were adapted, filmed and ultimately viewed by the public (often with special permission from the highest offices) through lenses of defeat and failure. These films – adapted by others – gave new meaning to the original texts and somewhere provided a bridge to the next phase in Mahfouz's long and brilliant career.
Ultimately, Greenberg is not served well by the book's brevity. If he were to expand this work, taking a page from early Mahfouz, with greater attention to detail and character, he could help us truly appreciate and reconsider the writer's multiple levels of creative input at such a rich moment in Mahfouz's and Egypt's cultural life.
