Group Read, August 2015: Midaq Alley

Our August Group Read is Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz. Please join in and use this thread to post any comments.

I'm in! Just started, so comments will follow later!

love it so far... the description of the sweet seller is gold.

Love the flavor of this book. At first it seemed like there were an awful lot of characters, all with alley locations and personal interconnections, but I'm feeling more at home in the alley now.

I finished it and am really a bit blown away by it.

Mahfouz creates personages and an atmosphere that make the alley incredibly real to me. The joy and the sadness, the interaction between the neighbours and their faith in god make it a such an authentic and unforgettable story.

I started today and am enjoying the very readable stories even if I keep having to flip back to remember who is who.

found out today from an Egyptian I work with that Midaq actually means 'alley' in Arabic. So, in English, the title is actually Alley Alley like Sahara Desert actually being Desert Desert!

I finished this in a couple of days - a easy and entertaining read. I always enjoy fiction that takes you to a place/culture you've not been to before, and in this case we get a slice of life in an alley in 1940s Egypt. Wider consideration's rarely intrude, and it focusses on the personal ups and downs of group of shopkeepers, landlords and other residents of this enclosed community. Written in a lively and readable style such that even the tragedies are not depressing but affirm that life goes on as it always has. 4/5

the ebook I downloaded from the Open Library has "expired" so I'm no longer able to continue reading it. When I try to log in to Open Library, clicking on the log in button takes me to, er.., Google's home page!

So, I'm giving up on this until I stumble across a physical copy at some point in the future.

>9 arukiyomi: Frustrating...

I'm not sure why you are having problems. The Open Library has never given me any grief. Are you sure your pc isn't infected? Anyway here is the login link:

https://openlibrary.org/account/login

macs at my office don't get infected do they ;-)

interesting. Your link proves that the page I actually visit when I click on the login button is in fact the one I just came from. Clicking login now brings me back to this thread!

Bonkers

Hmm, I think it's a problem your end then, perhaps not infected but blocked. A link is a link is a link - it takes you to the place it's told to unless it's interfered with in someway. That link works perfectly for me and I copied it from the site itself.

Could someone else try it and make sure?

I have finished Midaq Alley and I enjoyed it mainly because it opened a window on a society and time that I had never explored before. I thought the characters were well drawn although I had a bit of a problem believing in Hamida.

A great book, from an author I had never heard of. I really enjoyed the storylines and the characters (I had the same difficulties initially keeping up with who was who!). I was fascinated with the character Zaita and his story, which didn't end in the way I thought it would. I also very much liked the story of Hamida and Abbas. The whole book is such a clever mix of happy, sad, ordinary, mundane, every day life with the back drop of the alley as the piece that pulls everything together. My final thoughts were that lives were changing, but the alley was stayling much the same, summed up nicely with the description 'And in the time between, doors and windows would creak as they were opened and then creak again as they were closed'. This book has stood the test of time, but I wonder how different it would be if it was written now?