Egyptian Nobel Laureate Mahfouz Stabbed, Wounded

CAIRO — Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1988 and the only Arab ever to receive the honor, was stabbed and seriously wounded Friday outside his home in a Cairo suburb.

The motive for the attack on the 82-year-old Egyptian author was not clear but police said they suspected Muslim militants, some of whom once declared Mahfouz an infidel and put him on their hit list.

The Interior Ministry said a man attacked Mahfouz with a sharp instrument and wounded him in the neck as he sat in a friend’s car outside his house in the suburb of Agouza.

Mahfouz, who has written numerous novels about life in Egypt, is now in the intensive care unit at the police hospital in Agouza, the sources said. He had been bleeding profusely but his condition was now stable and “reassuring,” they added.