CAIRO, Aug 30: Naguib Mahfuz, Egypt’s most celebrated author and the only Arab to win the Nobel literature prize, died on Wednesday at the age of 94, several weeks after his health suddenly deteriorated.

Mr Mahfuz, who was almost killed in 1994 when a radical Islamist stabbed him, was admitted to an interior ministry hospital in Cairo in mid-July suffering from various kidney problems, pneumonia and other ailments related to his age.

Mr Mahfuz “suffered a cardiac arrest on Tuesday at 7:00 pm (1600 GMT) but doctors resuscitated him. He had another one Wednesday at 8:00 am (0500 GMT) and this time there was failure,” a close friend said.

He is to be buried on Thursday with a funeral at Cairo’s Al-Rashdan mosque, where ceremonies are often held for honoured public figures, interior ministry sources said, suggesting President Mubarak may attend.

Mr Mahfuz “was an exceptional writer, an enlightened and creative thinker, an author who brought Arab culture and literature to the world’s attention,” a statement from Mubarak’s office said.

France’s Jacques Chirac paid homage to “a man of peace, tolerance and dialogue,” while US President George W. Bush hailed writings that “transcend all stereotypes and show the deepest insight into the lives of Egyptians and of all mankind.”

Born in Cairo in December 1911, Mahfuz was Egypt’s most renowned intellectual with about 50 novels to his name.

A flurry of other novels followed but it was the Cairo trilogy — Between the Palaces, Palace of Longing and Sugarhouse — published between 1955 and 1957, that brought his name to the forefront of Arab literature.

In 1988, Mr Mahfuz won the Nobel prize for literature.

He divided the prize money in four equal parts: one for his wife, two for his daughters, while part of his share went to charities for the Palestinians.—AFP