Cairo University in 1934 with a degree in philosophy and has worked as a civil servant, a Cairo University administrator, and for governmental film broadcasting organizations. Mahfouz has published more than forty volumes of novels and short stories over the past fifty years, many of which have been made into films. In 1988, Naguib Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Los Angeles Times Book Review: "Mahouz's work is freshly nuanced and hauntingly lyrical. The Nobel Prize acknowledges the universal significance of Mahfouz's fiction.