Additional Thoughts on the Work of Naguib Mahfouz

As I mentioned in an earlier post on the work of Naguib Mahfouz , the website thegreatestbooks.org lists what they believe to be the top six of his 34 novels:
Palace Walk - Palace of Desire - Sugar Street (from the Cairo Trilogy ) - Children of Gebelawi (aka Children of Our Alley ) Midaq Alley and Miramar .
At the time of that earlier post, I had finished reading the Cairo Trilogy and had begun reading Children of Our Alley . I had enjoyed the trilogy and I set out to read the other 3 books on the list.

Sadly, I found Children of Our Alley a drudge and a very difficult read. As I wrote in the earlier post,"Children of Our Alley has been described as an allegory of the interlinked history of the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). The first four sections of the novel retell the stories of Adam (Adham), Moses (Gabal), Jesus (Rifa'a) and Muhammad (Qasim)".

Linking the four characters, Adham, Gabal, Rifa'a and Qasim to Adam, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad seems a bit of a stretch to me. The stories were set in 19th century Egypt and if I hadn't read elsewhere that the characters represented Adam, Moses, Jesus and Muhammed, I would never had picked up on that from the novel. Each story was pretty much a repeat of the previous story, with very little added. The novel isn't very long, but it took me 10 days to shovel my way to the end.

Even though I was disappointed with Children of Our Alley I went on to read Midaq Alley . I'm glad I did. It restored my faith in Mahfouz. I found the book to be better than any of the 3 books in the trilogy.

 There's an excellent review of the novel online - written in 2003 by Louis Proyect. It's a much better review than any I could write.

I'll be finishing up with Naguib Mahfouz with the sixth novel on the list - Miramar .