Evil and existence

This study attempts to penetrate Naguib Mahfouz's novelistic philosophy, which was characterized by a relatively fixed view of the world and its ever-evolving, changing forms. Reading the preserved text begins with three entries that illuminate it both technically and philosophically: authority, paradox, and coincidence. This text monitored human existence in its basic aspects: the horror of time and the significance of death, and that "secret" that man suffers from and cannot explain. These aspects led to a saying that settled within the folds of Mahfouz's novelistic world, its biggest title: "evil" in its multiple levels, which is immanent to all of existence and the various human worlds. This study attempted to read Mahfouz's novel in its independent, specific perspective, beginnings, and endings. The reading was completed by comparing it to the achievements of an international novelist, such as the novel of Dostoyevsky, the Russian who combined the novel and philosophy, as well as the novel of Thomas Mann, the widely cultured German, and the reflections of the Frenchman Andre Balzac, who was drawn to failure. Man and his defeat. Obviously, Mahfouz, who was both diverse and innovative, was not imitating anyone, as much as he was achieving a qualitative dialogue between the great fictional worlds, which begin and end with the estranged person. The Egyptian novelist developed the Arabic novel as he developed his novel. He developed his novel over the course of fifty years, and went through different novel forms: the historical novel, the novel of a realistic approach, the symbolic novel, and the novel of free experimentation that no one else attempted. He always wrote what he wanted, open to horizons that did not accept closure, and he left behind a vast novelistic legacy without which the history of the Arabic novel cannot be looked at, and the viewer of the global novel would not be fair if he did not stop before Naguib Mahfouz's Egyptian, Arab, and universal novel at the same time.