Mahfouz is the only Arab to have ever been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and was also the oldest living recipient of the award. A critic of Egyptian society and Islamic Fundamentalism, in 1994 Mahfouz, then 82, was stabbed in an assassination attempt over perceived blasphemy in his 1959 novel Children of Gebelawi.
Media Services has a good documentary about his life and views of society – Naguib Mahfouz: The Passage of the Century VHS 5365