Midaq Allay is a slice-of-life picture of several months in a small alley in Cairo during World War II. The residents of the alley all have their small dramas, and Mahfouz manages to weave all their stories together to tell an interesting tale of love, lust, greed, selfishness, religious devotion, depravity, and drug addiction. It's an Egyptian soap opera!
Mahfouz is an excellent story-teller, and the various characters and their actions come alive and make continued reading a compulsion. Of course, I have no idea if this is a true picture of life in that place and time, or if everything is slightly exaggerated (which seems likely to me).
Mahfouz has received the Nobel Prize for Literature, and this is not one of his most acclaimed novels. I plan to read others of his soon. It is always interesting to perceive how those of another culture think, believe, behave. Plus, Mahfouz tells a darn-good story.
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