The 1988 Nobel prize-winner put modern Arabic literature on the map, says Robert McCrum.

Gao Xingjian the first Chinese writer to win the Nobel prize. I have never heard of him, and neither had anyone else whose opinion I canvassed in the minutes following, but then neither had many westerners heard of the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz before his triumph in 1988 or Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982

Politics tops Egyptians' list of favourite reading matter at the moment, according to Cairo's most famous bookshop, Madbouli's. Perennial favourites include works by Egypt's Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz and foreign literature translated into Arabic, including titles by Gabriel García Márquez and Hemingway.