Echoes of an Autobiography by Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz's autobiography is unlike any other biography I have read. As it's title suggests, the book contains echoes of what has passed. Mahfouz has managed to capture the dim lights and the faded photographs of his life and settle them into short epitaph-like stories. A more accurate word to describe Echoes of an Autobiography is "vignette". Merriam-Webster's Dictionary has three definitions of the word "vignette". Firstly, as a "running ornament" or a decorative design placed on the title page or chapter. It wouldn't be a stretch to consider each vignette or story as a carefully placed design or motif on a larger story. The second definition describes a vignette as a picture or engraving that shades off into the surrounding paper; the third definition, "a short literary sketch".

In a way, Echoes of an Autobiography attempts to capture "the essence of the essence" Naguib Mahfouz's life through riddles, aphorisms, and passing thoughts (ix).  Several of the vignettes speak on the major themes of human nature and living, such as jealousy, love, hatred, fickleness, justice, morality, judgment, death and dying, and the transient quality of life. As with Arabian Nights and Days, a cursory reading of the text provides a plain story or background - a skeletal structure without the flesh and connecting ligaments of a functioning body. It's up to the reader to fill in the framework with muscles and joints and a covering of skin through collaborative discussion (as we did in class) and reflection. The vignettes are often not easy to swallow, such as "Justice" (13) and "A Lesson Learned" (11) as they seem too bare bones from which to construct a proverb from. Perhaps Mahfouz errs on the side of too little than too much, choosing to led the readers think and realize what it is the story could tell them. Nadine Gordimer's foreword emphasizes that the essential quality of a writer is in their words, not in their appearance or personality: "The essence of a writer's being is in the work, not the personality, though the world values things otherwise...The persona of the writer is the vessel" (viii). Likewise, Mahfouz himself is the backdrop against which his vignettes stand up from.