Naguib Mahfouz was the first Arab winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the most prominent literary figure in the Arab world of the Twentieth Century. Best known for his Cairo Trilogy (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Walk), which became an international bestseller, he was born in Cairo in 1911 and lived in the suburb of Agouza with his wife and two daughters for the rest of his life. He published more than thirty novels as well as many collections of short stories, plays and screenplays. In 1994, after he published a novel that led him into trouble with Egypt's religious authorities, an attempt was made on his life, but he died peacefully in 2006, aged 94.