Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz ISBN: 0-385-26476-3 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 December, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.62 (13 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Midaq Alley, a must read.
Comment: As a Senior in High School I have read my fair share of novels. The beginning of the novel was a little confusing, but after the first few chapters it became a captivating book based on many people's lives in an alley in Cairo. I have never before read a novel that was written like this one was. It jumps from story to story of the diffent characters, where at first they seem to have nothing to do with any other, but when you reach the end you understand how the stories intertwine. Once I started reading this book, I couldn't put it down. I was fascinated by the streets of Cairo from Mahfouz's writing style and descriptions. It makes me want to read more of Mahfouz's works. Also I want to learn more about Cairo's "alleys". It is a great and fascinating book to read.
Rating: 4
Summary: Great book but soft in translation
Comment: This book is excellent. The plot pressure cooks in the alley, with a dynamic flow. Weakest aspect is in translation, it's something you can sometimes "tell," but not too often. This novel, in translation, demands footnotes. It won a Nobel Prize for a reason, pick it up.
Rating: 4
Summary: A soap opera? Only on the surface...
Comment: Focusing on the lives of the inhabitants of a humble--but not wholly destitute--neighborhood, Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz's 1947 novel could be (unfairly) dismissed as "Melrose Place" in Cairo. Yet this is no Grace Metalious soap opera; Western readers will instead find that "Midaq Alley" calls to mind the style of Christopher Isherwood, the plotting of Armistead Maupin, and the characters of Rohinton Mistry. And Trevor La Gassick's superb translation make this a surprisingly fluent, elegant, and humorous yarn.
Although filmed in 1995 as "El Callejón de los milagros," a critically acclaimed Mexican film starring Selma Hayek, this novel has never quite reached the audience it deserves. Like "Tales of the City," "Midaq Alley" follows the interlinking stories of several characters who share little more than aspirations to affluence, romantic entanglements--and an address. The reader is introduced to more than a dozen characters, but the novel spotlights three: the cafe owner Kirsha, a married man who flirts with young men in front of discomfited patrons, neighbors, and friends (not to mention his incensed wife); the fickle, young, beautiful Hamida, who flits from man to man in search of wealth and comfort; and Abbas, who joins the British armed forces to earn enough money to win over Hamida.
Yet other eccentrics from the alley are just as memorable: the horrid Zaita, who serves as tyrant over the local beggars he has "fashioned" by unusual means (and whose demeanor and methods are astonishingly similar to Mr. Beggarmaster from Mistry's "A Fine Balance," written 50 years later); Mrs. Saniya Afifi, a widow who undergoes cut-rate cosmetic dentistry to win over a new husband--and then is horrified by the hush-hush source of her new dentures; and the suave, slick, duplicitous Ibrahim Faraj, a stranger to the alley who spirits Hamida away from her home into a world of extravagance and debauchery she never imagined possible.
In the background is World War II, which ironically presents inhabitants of the alleys with the prospect of advancement in the "outside" world--an opportunity that proves both short-lived and elusive. Scratch below the surface, and you'll find a morality tale about the ultimate displeasure that materialism brings to those who worship it. Yet Mahfouz avoids didacticism when presenting his themes, opting instead for a light-hearted objectivity that brings the residents of Midaq Alley to life.
 |
Title: Accommodating Protest: Working Women, the New Veiling, and Change in Cairo by Arlene Elowe MacLeod ISBN: 0231072813 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: April, 1993 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
 |
Title: The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea by John Nathan, Yukio Mishima ISBN: 0679750150 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 31 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
 |
Title: The Harafish by Naguib Mahfouz ISBN: 0385423357 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 17 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
 |
Title: Miramar by NAGUIB MAHFOUZ ISBN: 038526478X Publisher: Bantam Books Pub. Date: 14 December, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: A History of the Modern Middle East by William L. Cleveland ISBN: 0813334896 Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: January, 2000 List Price(USD): $51.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
