Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) was born in the crowded Cairo district of Gamaliya. He wrote nearly 40 novel-length works, plus hundreds of short stories and numerous screenplays. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988.
Fatma Moussa Mahmoud (1927–2007) was professor and chair of the English Department at Cairo University. She was the author of The Modern Egyptian Novel and the editor of an encyclopedia of the theater. Her Arabic translation of King Lear ran on the Cairo stage for eight years, while her translation of her daughter Ahdaf Soueif’s novel The Map of Love was published in 2001.