Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz – SOLD OUT

This Great Books class is sold out. Please email human@unc.edu with your First & Last name, and phone number to be added to the waitlist.

featuring Nadia Yaqub, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

First writer in Arabic to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

Widely acclaimed as Nobel Prize-winner Mahfouz’s best novel, Midaq Alley brings to life one of the hustling, teeming back alleys of Cairo in the 1940s. No other novel so vividly evokes the sights and sounds of the city. Never has his 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.  — Penguin Random House, Inc.

Though the novel is set during the Second World War, the characters’ alienation from the prevailing political system and the desire of many of them to escape the economic and social stagnation of the alley give the work an unexpectedly up-to-date flavor. Mahfouz presents his characters with wry humor and a relish for the contradictions and fallibilities innate in people everywhere.  — The American University in Cairo Press

Naguib Mahfouz virtually invented the novel as an Arab form.  — The New York Times Book Review

A Dickens of the Cairo cafes.   — Newsweek

Mahfouz’s work is freshly nuanced and hauntingly lyrical. The Nobel Prize acknowledges the universal significance of his fiction.   — Los Angeles Times Book Review

Meeting Dates: Wednesdays, November 11 and November 18

Cost: $35, includes a copy of the book shipped to your home

Register online or call 919.962.1544