ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will use Naguib Mahfouz’s 1959 novel Awlad haratina (English translation Children of Our Alley, 1996) and its representation of the status of the scribe of the alley as an extended metaphor (the alley as the nation) to look at the literati themselves and the politics and battles that permeate the constrained and globally dependent literary field in Egypt through a reading of the American University in Cairo (AUC) annual Naguib Mahfouz Award over the past 11 years. By focusing on the nature of the battles that erupt yearly after the announcement of the prize, I will explore issues of class and gender, as well as cultural and national belonging that on the one hand circumscribe the literary field and on the other situate it within a global context. As will be seen from the nature of the battles that follow the announcement of the AUC Naguib Mahfouz Award, many of the questions surrounding the ideal literary producer that lay at the heart of Chapter 1 are ones that are intricately linked to these yearly debates as well. I am particularly implicated in this chapter since I currently chair the AUC Naguib Mahfouz Award, a position I have occupied since 2003 after my colleague Ferial Ghazoul of the Department of English and Comparative Literature, who had chaired the committee since the award was established in 1996, stepped down.
