Böcker av Naguib Mahfouz

The books' titles are taken from actual streets in Cairo, the city of Mahfouz's childhood and youth. The trilogy follows the life of the Cairene patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad and his family across three generations, from World War I to the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952.

As Cairo shrugs off the final vestiges of colonialism, Ahmad Al Jawad has lost his power and surveys the world from a latticed balcony. Unable to control his family's destiny, he watches helplessly as his dynasty and the traditions he holds dear disintegrate before his eyes. But through Ahamd's three grandsons we see modern how Egypt takes shape.

Follows the Al Jawad family into the awakening world of the 1920's and the sometimes violent clash between Islamic ideals, personal dreams and modern realities. Having given up his vices after his son's death, ageing patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad pursues an arousing lute-player - only to find she has married his eldest son.

Widely acclaimed as Naguib Mahfouz's best novel, Midaq Alley brings to life one of the hustling, teeming back alleys of Cairo in the 1940s. From Zaita the cripple-maker to Kirsha the hedonistic cafe owner, 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 vividly evoke Egypt's largest city as it teeters on the brink of change. Never has Nobel Prize-winner Mahfouz's talent for rich and luxurious storytelling been more evident than here, in his portrait of one small street as a microcosm of the world on the threshold of modernity.

In this collection Mahfouz deals with diverse political topics such as socio-economic class, democracy and dictatorship, Islam and extremism.