Imprinted Life discussion

Personal prose pieces, Echoes of an Autobiography, of نجيب محفوظ Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian Nobel Laureate.

This book's considered "autobiographical", i.e., about Naguib Mahfouz the Egyptian Nobel Laureate in Literature. The short prose pieces, however, are more like poetry or, as a reviewer commented, "parables". The thoughts are wise and captivating. An end biographical section by the translator Denys Johnson-Davies is informative.

I've read this book once from cover-to-cover. I'm rereading it, taking notes where necessary, before writing my review of it.

This is a spiritual biography about life and living containing dreams and pearls of (Sufi) wisdom. The message seems to be that people carve out a beautiful, loving life out of the cosmos before leaving it for the unknown condition of death. Nadine Gordimer's Introduction, "The Dialogue of Late Afternoon", talks about the book's themes of "old age", "death", and "life's transitoriness". Stories and adages are based on Sufism or an interpretation of that philosophy. The call is for freedom, experience, movement, living in the world, service to humankind, fraternal communication as well as of dreams and otherworldly voices. Mahfouz and Sheikh Abd-Rabbih al-Ta'ih narrate the pieces in first person. While Mahfouz often describes his dreams, the Sheikh is given to parables with an ironic twist to them--provoking a reflective pause from the reader.

Who can determine that happiness was a living reality and not a dream or an illusion?

The Denys Johnson-Davies's "About the Author" gave interesting biographical facts about Mahfouz's childhood and home, which found a way into his novels. Mahfouz started writing at a young age, was influenced by the independence movement, and worked before retirement in various posts of the civil service. Mahfouz's style is known for "montage" (selectively piecing together disparate passages) and "flashback" and for "realism" combined with "ambiguity".