Repsone to Naguib Mafouz' "Echoes of an Autobiography"

Naguib Mafouz Echoes of an Autobiography is easily my favorite book among the works we’ve covered this semester.  A series of extremely short narratives, conversations, and proverbs, some lasting on a few sentences, this book was in no way typical of autobiographical non-fiction.  There were no extended explanations of the author’s childhood, no reflections on his coming of age or accomplishments, and no detailed descriptions of his family, yet the lack of these elements was somewhat refreshing.  It seems Mafouz was less concerned here with the details of his life and more concerned with his view of life and with the things he learned and experiences about humanity as a whole.

One of most impressive aspects of the short vignette’s that make up Echoes is their incredible depth.  Much is said here with very few words, and these entries are both challenging and thought-provoking for the reader.  Major themes include the nature of human existence, the inevitability of death, and tendency of individuals to go largely unnoticed by society.  In one chilling account, Mafouz tells the story of a man hit by a bus and killed using a tone that is so unemotional and matter-of-fact that the entry starts of sounding remarkably like a world problem one might encounter while taking a mathematics course.  In another, Mafouz tells of a conversation between an old man and a woman in which the man asks why the woman “[expends] herself on the insignificant” (23) and she responds by stating that she “used to sell love at a handsome profit” but “came to buy it at a considerable loss.”  (23)  The woman then describes life as “wicked and fascinating,” a statement which seems to capture Mafouz own view of the world as expressed in Echoes.

Echoes of an Autobiography tackles deep and complex human issues, and Mafouz use of such short entries to convey such enormous ideas in surprisingly successful.  In some ways, this book feels much like a collection of poetry, through the entries are invariably prose.  They share with poetry, however, their ability to express much in few words, and like poetry, they require a bit digging and, at times, a great deal of thought to uncover the gem within.