Chinese Ambassador to Egypt Wu Sike has sent a mourning telegraph to the wife of Egyptian Nobel prize winner for literature Naguib Mahfouz, who died on Wednesday morning, embassy spokesman said Thursday.

"I am shocked when learning the sad news. Here I would like to express the deepest condolences to you on behalf of the embassy and me myself," said Wu in his telegraph.

Mahfouz died on Wednesday morning at an Interior Ministry hospital in Cairo at the age of 95 after suffering unstoppable ulcer bleeding overnight.

Mahfouz, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1988, was the first Arab to win the prize. His works have been translated into many languages.

The Nobel prize winner, born in December 1911 in Cairo, began writing when he was 17. His first novel was published in 1939 and ten more were written before the Egyptian revolution of July 1952.

The novelist is best known for his Cairo Trilogy -- Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Street -- which describes life in the over 1,000-year-old Islamic part of the Egyptian capital.

Source: Xinhua