Echoes of An Autobiography.

New York: Doubleday, 1997. First edition of this autobiography by the first Arab writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Octavo, original half cloth. Signed by both Nobel Laureates Naguib Mahfouz and Nadine Gordimer, who contributed the foreword to this volume. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Both signatures were obtained in person. Naguib Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988 for his status as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature to explore themes of existentialism (Gordon, 2007). He published 34 novels, 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films. Mahfouz's work describes the development of his country, Egypt, in the 20th-century but in a manner that combine the literary techniques of Eastern and Western literature, authors such as Marcel Proust and Franz Kafka. His stories are set in the densely populated urban areas of Cairo, and his characters are ordinary people who must cope with the modernization of society and the temptations of Western values.