Realising that writing must inevitably be part-time, he joined the civil service until his retirement in 1971. Having graduated in philosophy from Cairo University in 1934 he then began an MA in philosophy, which he abandoned when he decided to make a career of writing. He received a traditional education at a kuttab (Koranic school), then at primary and secondary schools, where he read many of the great works of classical Arabic literature and mastered the Arabic language with its complicated grammar and syntax. Mahfouz's life was ordered and singularly devoid of variety or dramatic happenings - if one is to exclude the 1994 assassination attempt by a young extremist from which the writer miraculously escaped with his life. Its features became part of his consciousness and are brought to life in some of his early realistic novels and, more particularly, in The Cairo Trilogy on which, both in the Arab world and in the west, his fame in great part rests. Born in Gamaliya in the old city of Cairo, the son of a minor official, the writer spent his first years in the distinctive medieval atmosphere with its narrow lanes, clustered overhanging buildings and picturesque artisans.
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