This is the second year in a row that the American University in Cairo Press has not awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature:
As Karim Zidan wrote last November, in “Naguib Mahfouz’s Daughter Fights to Preserve Her Father’s Legacy,” which appeared in LitHub, Mahfouz’s daughter has been in an ongoing struggle to take control of her father’s legacy.
Last November, the AUC Press announced that they would not be awarding the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature that year, but that the award would return in 2020. They now say that, “Due to the unprecedented volume of entries for the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature this year, and the limitations on reviewing those entries imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, we regret to announce that the awarding of the Mahfouz Medal—normally scheduled for December 2020—is likely to be severely delayed this year.”
The last awardee was Omaima Al-Khamis, in 2018, for Voyage of the Cranes in the Cities of Agate.
More from 2020 in the afterlife of Naguib Mahfouz:
February 2020
The Mahfouz museum received a donation of 257 Books And manuscripts from the late author’s daughter, Umm Kulthum. More from Egypt Today. It’s a museum that, Ursula Lindsey writes, honors Mahfouz but doesn’t inspire. It was closed for much of the spring and summer, and re-opened in August.
May 2020
AUC Press published Adel Kamel’s The Magnificent Conman of Cairo, in Waleed Almusharaf’s translation, with a foreword by the late Mahfouz, who was a good friend of Kamel’s.
July 2020
This month, Gingko published the collection After the Nobel Prize 1989-1994: The Non-fiction Writing of Naguib Mahfouz, translated by R. Neil Hewison. More about the collection at ArabLit.
October 2020
Five literary works by iconic Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz are being prepared for a multiple-season TV series entitled ‘Cairo,’ set for a 2022 premiere. More at Ahram Online.
December 2020
An exhibition will be held in Cairo’s Mahmoud Mokhtar Museum, between 10-14 December, featuring caricatures of Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz and Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez. More from the press release and Egypt Today.
Also, for Mahfouz day:
We’re bringing back a short story by Naguib Mahfouz, “The Man in the Picture,” which appeared for the first time in Karim Zidan’s sharp-eyed translation in THE EYE issue of ArabLit Quarterly.
