Midaq Alley

Widely acclaimed as&#160;Naguib Mahfouz's best novel&#160;<i>Midaq Alley</i> brings to life&#160;one of the hustling teeming back alleys&#160;of Cairo&#160;in the 1940s. From Zaita the cripple-maker to Kirsha the hedonistic cafe owner&#160;from Abbas the barber who mistakes greed for love to Hamida who sells her soul to escape the alley from waiters and widows to politicians pimps and poets the inhabitants of Midaq Alley&#160;vividly evoke Egypt's largest&#160;city as it teeters on the brink of change. Never has Nobel Prize-winner&#160;Mahfouz's talent for rich and luxurious storytelling been more evident than here in his portrait of&#160;one small street&#160;as a microcosm of the world on the threshold of modernity.