The Cairo of Naguib Mahfouz

Gamal al-Ghitani was born in Guhayna, Egypt on May 9, 1945. He apprenticed to a carpet maker and studied Oriental carpet design at the College of Arts and Crafts. In 1969, he joined the staff of the newspaper Akhbar al-Youm and was a correspondent during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. In 1993, he founded Akhbar al-Adab, a leading literary magazine, and was its editor until 2011. He wrote several novels including The Zafarani Files, Pyramid Texts, The Book of Epiphanies, and The Book of Revelations. He also published The Mahfouz Dialogs, a collection of recorded conversations that the novelist Naguib Mahfouz had with friends over a half-century.

In 2015, he received the Nile Award, Egypt's top literary state honor. He also received the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Egyptian National Prize for Literature, and the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for his novel Ren. He died as a result of heart and respiratory problems on October 18, 2015 at the age of 70.

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