"We used the Western style to express our own themes and stories. But don't forget that our heritage includes The Thousand and One Nights"
About this Quote
A quiet corrective hides inside Mahfouz's politely phrased reminder: yes, Egyptian and Arab writers can borrow the Western novel without apologizing for it, but they should stop acting as if literary modernity arrived only on a boat from Europe. The first sentence concedes the obvious historical fact of the 20th century Arabic novel: its dominant toolkit (realism, the bourgeois family saga, the psychologically interior protagonist) was imported, adapted, made serviceable. Mahfouz himself is proof, building Cairo into a world-historical setting with Balzacian patience.
Then he swivels to the deeper claim. "But don't forget" is less nostalgia than warning. Cultural memory is political, and forgetting is a kind of surrender: if Western forms become the only yardstick for seriousness, local tradition gets reclassified as charming folklore. By invoking The Thousand and One Nights, Mahfouz isn't merely name-checking a classic; he's reclaiming a sophisticated narrative inheritance that includes recursion, frame tales, cliffhangers, oral cadence, erotic and moral ambiguity, and a street-level intelligence about power. It's a counter-archive of technique, not just content.
The context is postcolonial self-fashioning: writers caught between international recognition (often mediated by Western tastes) and the need to sound like home. Mahfouz's intent is strategic pluralism. Use the Western style, sure - but don't let it erase the fact that Arab storytelling has always been modern in its own way, and sometimes wilder, darker, and more structurally inventive than the novels that later arrived as "the model."
Then he swivels to the deeper claim. "But don't forget" is less nostalgia than warning. Cultural memory is political, and forgetting is a kind of surrender: if Western forms become the only yardstick for seriousness, local tradition gets reclassified as charming folklore. By invoking The Thousand and One Nights, Mahfouz isn't merely name-checking a classic; he's reclaiming a sophisticated narrative inheritance that includes recursion, frame tales, cliffhangers, oral cadence, erotic and moral ambiguity, and a street-level intelligence about power. It's a counter-archive of technique, not just content.
The context is postcolonial self-fashioning: writers caught between international recognition (often mediated by Western tastes) and the need to sound like home. Mahfouz's intent is strategic pluralism. Use the Western style, sure - but don't let it erase the fact that Arab storytelling has always been modern in its own way, and sometimes wilder, darker, and more structurally inventive than the novels that later arrived as "the model."
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Naguib
Add to List
