He studied humanities at the University of Frankfurt and continued his education in the United States.

Linz held senior executive position in New York with Herder & Herder, McGraw-Hill, and the Seabury Press in the 1960s and 1970s, before establishing the Continuum and Crossroad publishing companies, and serving as the Continuum Group's president and publisher in New York from 1979 to 1999.

On returning to Cairo in 1995 he collaborated with Naguib Mahfouz to establish the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, an annual literary prize for a work of fiction in Arabic, with the guarantee of translation and publication in English for the winner.

[2] Among his authors at the AUC Press were Naguib Mahfouz, the first Arabic writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Ahmed Zewail, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, archaeologist Zahi Hawass and Pope Shenouda III, head of the Coptic Church.

A long-time resident of Rye, New York, he was an avid sailor and member of the American Yacht Club.