Nobel Prize Recipient. He received world-wide recognition upon being awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was the first Muslim to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature; as of 2021, there has been a total of three. The Nobel Prize committee presented the award for his "through works rich in nuance - now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous - has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind." All of his novels have settings in Egypt. In his 70-year literary career, he was a prolific author, publishing at least 34 novels, 350 short stories, 30 plays or movie scripts, newspaper columns, essays, travelogues, memoirs and political analyses. After beginning with short stories, his first full-length novel "Khufu's Wisdom," was published in 1939, which was followed with ten more before the Egyptian Revolution in 1952. Telling the saga of three families from World War I to the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, his most famous work was The Cairo Trilogy: "Bayn al Qasrayn" in 1956 and "Qasr al Shawq," and "Sukkariya" in 1957. Titles translated to English would be "Palace Walk," "Palace of Desire" and Sugar Street". The trilogy was translated to Hebrew between 1981 and 1987 and to English in the early 1990s. Another outstanding novel was the 1958 novel, "Children of Our Alley," which was translated to English in 1981. Other acclaimed works are "Midaq Alley" in 1947, "The Beggar" in 1965, "Adrift on the Nile" in 1966, "Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth" in 1985, and "Love and the Veil" in 1988. Half of his novels have been adapted to films in the Arabic-speaking world. After graduating from Cairo University with a degree in philosophy in 1934, he became, like his father, a civil servant, serving in various positions before retiring in 1971. He started classes to earn a masters degree in philosophy but abandoned this path to become an author. Being very focus, he balanced his time with being a civil servant and writing, leaving little time for a social time. Besides the Nobel Prize, he received the State Recognition Award in Literature, Decoration of Republic of the 1st Order and the Collar of the Nile which is the highest order in Egypt. His politics supported the Camp David Accords of September 17, 1978, which provided a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. For this, his books were banned in many Arab countries until after he received the Nobel Prize. Along with others, his name was place on a death list, thus he was given police protection. In 1994, an 82-year-old Mahfouz was stabbed in the neck by Islamist militant, who was angered by his work and from that moment, he practically lived secluded. The wound in his neck left him partially paralyzed in his right arm. He did not marry until he was 43 years old. He and his wife Atiyyatallah Ibrahim became the parents of two daughters. At the age of 77 and with a decline in his physical health and his vision, he did not attend the Nobel Prize presentation in Sweden. In 1996 the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature was established to honor Arabic writers.