Egyptian Nobel winner Mahfouz dies [Archives:2006/977/Front Page]

BBC, Aug. 30 ) Egypt's Nobel Prize-winning writer, Naguib Mahfouz, has died in a Cairo hospital at the age of 94.

Mahfouz had been hospitalized since mid-July after falling and injuring his head during a midnight stroll.

His vibrant, colorful portrayal of the Egyptian capital in his Cairo Trilogy won the 1988 Nobel Prize for literature.

Mahfouz had suffered health problems since being stabbed in the neck in 1994 by an Islamist extremist, angry at his portrayal of God in one of his novels.

He was hospitalized for seven weeks following the incident and suffered nerve damage in his neck, which limited his ability to write and caused his eyesight and hearing to deteriorate.

Mahfouz's Nobel Prize brought international recognition to a man already regarded in the Middle East as one of its best writers and premier intellectuals.

He published more than 30 novels, short stories, plays, newspaper columns, essays, travelogues, memoirs and political analyses.

Facts about Naguib Mahfouz

1911: Born in Cairo

1934: Graduated in philosophy from Cairo University

1959: Al-Azhar, one of the world's most important Islamic institutions, bans his novel because it includes characters representing God and the prophets

1988: The first and only Arab to win the Nobel Prize for literature

1994: Stabbed in the neck by an Islamist militant angered by his work.
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