‘Naguib Mahfouz Year’ to Launch in Cairo on August 30th
The year-long programme will mark 20 years since Naguib Mahfouz’s death with exhibitions, screenings and literary events.
The Naguib Mahfouz Museum and Creativity Centre in Cairo will launch ‘Naguib Mahfouz Year’ on August 30th, 2026, marking 20 years since the death of the Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian writer.
The programme will begin at the museum, located at Tekkeyet Mohamed Abu El Dahab, with a press conference outlining the activities planned over the coming year. Architect Hamdy El-Sotouhi, Head of the Cultural Development Fund sector, will attend, with journalist Tarek El-Taher, supervisor of the museum and centre, moderating.
The initiative is part of the Cultural Development Fund’s wider work around major Egyptian cultural figures, with the year-long programme intended to revisit Mahfouz’s writing and introduce different aspects of his legacy to new audiences.
Following the press conference, the museum will open the exhibition ‘Naguib Mahfouz.. from the assassination attempt to the passing.. reading in the Egyptian newspapers’.
Prepared by El-Taher, the exhibition brings together material from Egyptian newspapers and magazines covering the 1994 assassination attempt against Mahfouz and the years leading up to his death in 2006, presenting a chronology of how those events were documented in the local press.
The launch programme will also include a new session of the monthly ‘Biography Club for Writers’, organised by the museum with the ‘Cairo Biography’ initiative.
Titled ‘Cairo of Naguib Mahfouz’, the session will feature a museum visit, a screening of the film ‘Darb Qirmiz’, and a reading from Mahfouz’s book ‘Hekayat Haratna’.
The club is supervised by researcher Abdel Azim Fahmy, founder of the ‘Cairo Biography’ initiative.
