Egypt’s Former Minister of Culture Gaber Asfour passes away at 77

Asfour was born on March 25, 1944 in the city of Mahalla Al-Kubra in the Gharbia Governorate.

He graduated from the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University, Department of Arabic Language in 1965.

He started his academic career by teaching at Cairo University then he was appointed as head of the Arabic language department at Cairo University in 1990.

Later Asfour was appointed as the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Culture.

His efforts also contributed to the establishment of the National Center for Translation, of which he became director in 2007.

Among his most prominent books are (The Ordeal of Enlightenment) and ( The Lights of Reason), (Time of the Novel), (The Seduction of Heritage), (LiterIG Criticism and Cultural Identity), (Criticism of the Culture of Underdevelopment), (Challenges of the ContemporIG Critic), (A Beautiful Time Has Passed), (On Loving Poetry) and (Margins on the Enlightenment Notebook ). He received the Tunisian Cultural Medal in 1995, the Sultan Al Owais Award in the field of literIG studies and criticism in 1997, the State Appreciation Award in the field of literature in 2009, the National Reward Medal from the rank of a leader from Morocco in 2010, and the Nile Prize in Literature in 2019.