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Three Novels: Midaq Alley / The Thief and the Dogs / Miramar
Considered by many to be Mahfouz's best novel, Midaq Alley centers around the residents of one of the hustling, teeming back alleys of Cairo. Also includes two of his other novels: Miramar, a tale of intersecting lives that provides us with a portrait of life in Egypt in the late 1960's; and The Thief and the Dogs, which depicts the fate of a Marxist thief, who has been released from prison and plans revenge.
581 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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About the author
Naguib Mahfouz
445 books16.2k followersNaguib Mahfouz (Arabic author profile: نجيب محفوظ) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
August 16, 2025
Mesmerizing, addictive, exceptional. No wonder Mahfouz received a Nobel Prize in literature.
I am very ignorant of Arabic culture and literature. I know a little episodic history, have some views about politics, and believe it is outside my ability to comprehend and understand. So that's what drew me to Mahfouz. Perhaps he would help me. But it took a while before I picked it up. And then, within in a week, it was over. Three exceptional novels, each very different, published between 1947 ad 1967. I will have to seek out more.
Midaq Alley
The first third of the novel felt like it was going to be a bunch of sketches of neighborhood characters. It felt, to me, much like V.S. Naipaul's early novel Miguel Street, but instead of Port of Spain, Trinidad, it was set in a small alley in Cairo in the early 1940s. Interesting, but only up to a point.
And then the story takes shape, slowly explaining certain characters, until finally coming into focus into a meaningful plot and ending. It is, as I wrote above, increasingly addictive, blending regional literature with a primal sense of urgency of wanting to know. But it's alright if it takes a little time, the little stories embedded in the plot make the journey seem too short.
The Thief and the Dogs
A man is released from prison obsessed with getting revenge on those he feels were responsible for putting him there. His former wife and her lover; she seems to have fallen for a former business partner. And his former politically-connected friend who had become his nemesis. We're never really sure about the authenticity of his motives or feelings of having been done wrong. He could be justified, he's more likely a deluded narcissist. We just never know. But that's not what this short novel is about.
It's about the mindset of the thief. And if he is or isn't one of the lowly dogs of society. That's up to us to decide. As I continued to read, unable to stop, I thought of a good Kurosawa story. Whether it's in Egypt or post-war Japan, some themes are truly universal and eternal.
Miramar
Written just prior to the Six-Day War between Egypt and Israel in 1967, this novel reminded me of the German film Das weisse Band about life in pre-WWI Germany. Neither is explicitly or implicitly about that which was to follow, but somehow they encapsulate what was to happen decades later. Each short chapter is told from the point of view of a character involved in a series of events that end in the apparent murder of one of them. The ending is very Dürrenmatt-esque, with a simple, somewhat unsatisfying ending (in the Hollywood happy or tidy sense).
Mesmerizing, addictive, exceptional.
I am very ignorant of Arabic culture and literature. I know a little episodic history, have some views about politics, and believe it is outside my ability to comprehend and understand. So that's what drew me to Mahfouz. Perhaps he would help me. But it took a while before I picked it up. And then, within in a week, it was over. Three exceptional novels, each very different, published between 1947 ad 1967. I will have to seek out more.
Midaq Alley
The first third of the novel felt like it was going to be a bunch of sketches of neighborhood characters. It felt, to me, much like V.S. Naipaul's early novel Miguel Street, but instead of Port of Spain, Trinidad, it was set in a small alley in Cairo in the early 1940s. Interesting, but only up to a point.
And then the story takes shape, slowly explaining certain characters, until finally coming into focus into a meaningful plot and ending. It is, as I wrote above, increasingly addictive, blending regional literature with a primal sense of urgency of wanting to know. But it's alright if it takes a little time, the little stories embedded in the plot make the journey seem too short.
The Thief and the Dogs
A man is released from prison obsessed with getting revenge on those he feels were responsible for putting him there. His former wife and her lover; she seems to have fallen for a former business partner. And his former politically-connected friend who had become his nemesis. We're never really sure about the authenticity of his motives or feelings of having been done wrong. He could be justified, he's more likely a deluded narcissist. We just never know. But that's not what this short novel is about.
It's about the mindset of the thief. And if he is or isn't one of the lowly dogs of society. That's up to us to decide. As I continued to read, unable to stop, I thought of a good Kurosawa story. Whether it's in Egypt or post-war Japan, some themes are truly universal and eternal.
Miramar
Written just prior to the Six-Day War between Egypt and Israel in 1967, this novel reminded me of the German film Das weisse Band about life in pre-WWI Germany. Neither is explicitly or implicitly about that which was to follow, but somehow they encapsulate what was to happen decades later. Each short chapter is told from the point of view of a character involved in a series of events that end in the apparent murder of one of them. The ending is very Dürrenmatt-esque, with a simple, somewhat unsatisfying ending (in the Hollywood happy or tidy sense).
Mesmerizing, addictive, exceptional.
June 8, 2010
Naguib Mahfouz is one the most poetic writers ever. These three novels are extraordinary in their depth and simplicity. Midaq Alley is a haunting slice of life in an Egyptian neighborhood. The Thief and the Dogs is a story that reads like a fine poem. Miramar is what Instance of the Fingerpost could have been. The same story told from the perspective of 5 different people involved, brilliantly laid out, fascinating and heartbreaking. Mr. Mahfouz's work is a must for everyone!
February 6, 2021
Not my cup of tea
October 20, 2019
The late Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz won the 1988 Nobel Prize for literature in 1988.
I became aware of him while reading a nonfiction book by Tony Horwitz, part of which was set in Cairo. Horwitz wrote of coffee house society in Cairo and said he had learned what to expect from Naguib Mahfouz's fiction.
I'm fascinated by urban cultures, even if I probably wouldn't do very well in them, and I like coffee houses, even though I drink tea. So I found this collection of short novels by Mahfouz in my neighborhood bookstore and slowly worked my way through it.
A subtitle that might apply to all three novels would be "Egyptians Behaving Badly." These are probably not novels the Egyptian Visitors Bureau is going to encourage you to read. There are no Pyramids here, no Sphinx, no scenic Nile River vistas. It's hard, gritty and occasionally violent.
"Midaq Alley" is the one of the three that is centered in a Cairo coffee house. I see it's considered by some to be Mahfouz's best novel, but it was my least favorite of the three. It has several key characters, none of which seemed terribly interesting.
"The Thief and the Dogs" is told from the perspective of a career criminal who is released from prison and quickly returns to his career. The thief in the story is a narcissist; only his own concerns are important to him. It's an intriguing but depressing morality tale, or perhaps an immorality tale.
"Miramar," set in Alexandria, was my favorite of the three, and it's told in an interesting way. We are in a pension -- in my culture, it'd probably be called a boarding house -- run by a past-her-prime woman with all single male tenants. Each of the men takes an interest, with varying motivations, in an attractive young woman named Zohra who has been hired as the pension's maid.
The first chapter is told by Amir Wagdi, a retired journalist who takes a fatherly interest in Zohra. After his chapter is finished, the action backs up to the beginning and is retold from the perspective of another tenant, and then by two more lodgers after that before Wagdi returns to wrap up the story. Zohra never speaks for herself, but everything centers around her.
Like the other two novels in this set, "Miramar" is quite grim. It does have some traces of humanity around the edges.
The introduction in this edition to "Miramar" was written by John Fowles, author of "The French Lieutenant's Woman." I found it helpful.
I became aware of him while reading a nonfiction book by Tony Horwitz, part of which was set in Cairo. Horwitz wrote of coffee house society in Cairo and said he had learned what to expect from Naguib Mahfouz's fiction.
I'm fascinated by urban cultures, even if I probably wouldn't do very well in them, and I like coffee houses, even though I drink tea. So I found this collection of short novels by Mahfouz in my neighborhood bookstore and slowly worked my way through it.
A subtitle that might apply to all three novels would be "Egyptians Behaving Badly." These are probably not novels the Egyptian Visitors Bureau is going to encourage you to read. There are no Pyramids here, no Sphinx, no scenic Nile River vistas. It's hard, gritty and occasionally violent.
"Midaq Alley" is the one of the three that is centered in a Cairo coffee house. I see it's considered by some to be Mahfouz's best novel, but it was my least favorite of the three. It has several key characters, none of which seemed terribly interesting.
"The Thief and the Dogs" is told from the perspective of a career criminal who is released from prison and quickly returns to his career. The thief in the story is a narcissist; only his own concerns are important to him. It's an intriguing but depressing morality tale, or perhaps an immorality tale.
"Miramar," set in Alexandria, was my favorite of the three, and it's told in an interesting way. We are in a pension -- in my culture, it'd probably be called a boarding house -- run by a past-her-prime woman with all single male tenants. Each of the men takes an interest, with varying motivations, in an attractive young woman named Zohra who has been hired as the pension's maid.
The first chapter is told by Amir Wagdi, a retired journalist who takes a fatherly interest in Zohra. After his chapter is finished, the action backs up to the beginning and is retold from the perspective of another tenant, and then by two more lodgers after that before Wagdi returns to wrap up the story. Zohra never speaks for herself, but everything centers around her.
Like the other two novels in this set, "Miramar" is quite grim. It does have some traces of humanity around the edges.
The introduction in this edition to "Miramar" was written by John Fowles, author of "The French Lieutenant's Woman." I found it helpful.
July 24, 2017
An Egyptian Camus' "Stranger"
November 25, 2024
I have here a fine edition collecting three novels by the foremost Arabic language writer known outside of the Middle East. Egyptian novelist and journalist Naguib Mahfouz had the exceptional fortune of breaking into the Western world and reorienting Western readers' understanding of what the Middle East was like. This collection brings together three novels from three different phases of Mahfouz's career as a novelist. He began writing historical novels of Ancient Egypt, but none from that period are represented here. What we do get is a prime example of phase two of his career - the realist phase. Midaq Alley, from 1947, recounts in slice-of-life style a year in the goings on of a Cairo neighborhood. It's not exactly a slum; it's more like a small remnant of earlier days. In this little world, everyone knows everyone, no secrets stay hidden for long, and life is both bitter and sweet. A reader may feel a kind of warmth for these characters, no matter how deep their flaws are. Characters slide in and out of the narrative, disappear and then come back for a while. Really, though, the protagonist is in the title - Midaq Alley.
The second novel comes from Mahfouz's third phase as a writer. Here, he dips into more experimental and modernist ventures, trying out Western genres in an Egyptian setting. The Thief and the Dogs, from 1961, tells the story of Said Mahran, and the few weeks, maybe two, after his release from prison. Said, a professional thief, feels he was betrayed, and vows vengeance on his former associates and ex-girlfriend, mother of his daughter. Told in stream-of-consciousness fashion reminiscent of Faulkner, with layers unconscious thoughts bubbling up, the reader quickly learns that Said is not a nice guy. Filled with rage and bitterness, coupled with an absurdly high opinion of himself, he stumbles his way through his attempted revenges, only to fail with disastrous results. It reads to me as if James M. Cain or Jim Thompson had set a novel in Cairo.
The last novel comes from Mahfouz's final phase as a writer, the philosophical phase. Miramar, from 1967, is, like Middaq Alley, set in a tight location with a limited number of characters who interact in various ways according to the setting. In this case, the setting is a Pension near the old resort district that Westerners used to frequent. The characters staying at this pension represent various perspectives on the political history of Egypt from the 1920s through the 1960s. Here again, Mahfouz draws on modernist techniques of internal monologue to tell the story. However, he uses the technique of focusing on about four key events, retelling the event each time from a different perspective. Much lying and self-delusion goes on. Mahfouz carefully sets the conditions for the reader to see the failures of the older generation, his generation, as the cause for the self-destructiveness of the new generation.
Reading these novels was a curious exercise for me, an entry into a world I knew little about. As John Fowles' introduction to Miramar makes clear, translating even modern Arabic-language literature into a Western language is terribly difficult. The writer in Arabic is burdened with the expectation of Arabic literary history, which forces the writer into an artificially graceful style of old-fashioned elocution, a style that seems highly artificial to modern Western readers. The writer in Arabic has few models to go on for how to represent modern characters realistically, and have them speak in plain and vernacular styles. Thus, the translators have the task of trying to make the writing palatable for modern audiences in the West while not betraying the feeling of the original. I have no idea how successful these translators were at doing that. It was interesting to find characters repeatedly talking in roundabout ways, often metaphorically, with liberal allusions to and quotations from the Koran. Characters talk in ritualistic phrases that are closer to Medieval and Early Modern English dialogue than to contemporary dialogue. Miramar is also a little difficult because so much of it rests on knowledge of Egyptian political history in the 20th century. There are notes to help the reader, but I still found myself looking up various things just to get a sense of what the characters were talking about and why they acted as they did.
All in all, this is a very enjoyable volume for someone who wants to be a bit adventurous in their reading.
The second novel comes from Mahfouz's third phase as a writer. Here, he dips into more experimental and modernist ventures, trying out Western genres in an Egyptian setting. The Thief and the Dogs, from 1961, tells the story of Said Mahran, and the few weeks, maybe two, after his release from prison. Said, a professional thief, feels he was betrayed, and vows vengeance on his former associates and ex-girlfriend, mother of his daughter. Told in stream-of-consciousness fashion reminiscent of Faulkner, with layers unconscious thoughts bubbling up, the reader quickly learns that Said is not a nice guy. Filled with rage and bitterness, coupled with an absurdly high opinion of himself, he stumbles his way through his attempted revenges, only to fail with disastrous results. It reads to me as if James M. Cain or Jim Thompson had set a novel in Cairo.
The last novel comes from Mahfouz's final phase as a writer, the philosophical phase. Miramar, from 1967, is, like Middaq Alley, set in a tight location with a limited number of characters who interact in various ways according to the setting. In this case, the setting is a Pension near the old resort district that Westerners used to frequent. The characters staying at this pension represent various perspectives on the political history of Egypt from the 1920s through the 1960s. Here again, Mahfouz draws on modernist techniques of internal monologue to tell the story. However, he uses the technique of focusing on about four key events, retelling the event each time from a different perspective. Much lying and self-delusion goes on. Mahfouz carefully sets the conditions for the reader to see the failures of the older generation, his generation, as the cause for the self-destructiveness of the new generation.
Reading these novels was a curious exercise for me, an entry into a world I knew little about. As John Fowles' introduction to Miramar makes clear, translating even modern Arabic-language literature into a Western language is terribly difficult. The writer in Arabic is burdened with the expectation of Arabic literary history, which forces the writer into an artificially graceful style of old-fashioned elocution, a style that seems highly artificial to modern Western readers. The writer in Arabic has few models to go on for how to represent modern characters realistically, and have them speak in plain and vernacular styles. Thus, the translators have the task of trying to make the writing palatable for modern audiences in the West while not betraying the feeling of the original. I have no idea how successful these translators were at doing that. It was interesting to find characters repeatedly talking in roundabout ways, often metaphorically, with liberal allusions to and quotations from the Koran. Characters talk in ritualistic phrases that are closer to Medieval and Early Modern English dialogue than to contemporary dialogue. Miramar is also a little difficult because so much of it rests on knowledge of Egyptian political history in the 20th century. There are notes to help the reader, but I still found myself looking up various things just to get a sense of what the characters were talking about and why they acted as they did.
All in all, this is a very enjoyable volume for someone who wants to be a bit adventurous in their reading.
March 7, 2018
Of the three novels, Midaq Alley was my favorite. The last one, Miramar, felt like it would have been more suitable written as a play. The Thief and The Dog? Just read Crime and Punishment; it's a near remake. I can't say I'm impressed by Mahfouz with all his prestige, but is that the translators' fault?
August 22, 2025
These three collected pieces—a novel (Midaq Alley) and two novellas/long stories ("The Thief and the Dogs" and "Miramar")—were, I think, the first works of literature-in-translation that I read, back in my twenties. I don't recall details of the stories, I only recall the sensation of being enthralled and wanting much more of this kind of literature.
August 6, 2017
Life in Cairo -- for most, born grow up and die in the same house in the same street. Classic, time gone
April 29, 2019
Midaq Alley reads like an engrossing soap opera.
June 22, 2020
I only read Midaq Alley. It was good, but not as great as his Trilogy.
June 4, 2023
Not for me. Beautiful motifs and that’s about it.
October 19, 2023
Decent
November 9, 2023
idc this counts if i had to suffer thru annotating the thief and the dogs it 1000% counts
December 12, 2024
4 1/4 stars
Midaq Alley & Miramar
Midaq Alley & Miramar
April 3, 2025
One of my favorite writer, great story teller, it gives you a little inside of what was happening in one of the inner alleys in Cairo. Great book, love it.
October 23, 2025
Beautiful descent into madness and stream of consciousness writing.
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January 28, 2026this is the stupidest fucking book i have ever read in my life
November 1, 2014
This is actually only a review for Miramar, the third of the books in this collection. In Miramar, a bunch of unlikely characters all a little down on their luck get thrown together in a fading guest house, run by an aging French Egyptian lady in Alexandria. Through their interactions with the beautiful servant girl Zohra, their hopes and mysteries are slowly revealed. Each chapter is told by a different individual, and we repeat the same events from these viewpoints. The characterisation is beautiful, and the sense of liberation in the air is tangible.
December 18, 2015
The author won the Nobel Prize for literature in the 1988. Sounds promising, right? Well, dear readers, the only reason that I continued reading this compendium of 3 novellas is because I kept hoping that something good would happen--but it never did. The only redeeming quality about this book is that the writing is very cinematic. The author does a great job setting the stage in each of these three stories, but the scenes that he depicts are very disturbing--poverty, mistreatment of women, other criminal acts. Let's just say that this book wasn't my cup of tea!
June 27, 2010
Not a bad book, I've just read too many books in this genre lately so I'm ready to move on. Obviously this author has received great praise and awards so who am I to judge his writing. It did hold my intest enough to finish and the modern Arab life is very well described. I'm just in need of a change of subject matter all together, hence the 3 star rating.
July 19, 2012
Supposedly the most widely read of Arab writers, Mahfouz seems to have a dim view of humanity. The first two stories show man at his worst while the last story tells of Egypt's sad plight. The author's style is sad, but very readable. He won the 1988 Nobel Prize for literature. Painful reading, worthwhile reading.
February 26, 2011
Five stars on the strength of The Thief and the Dogs alone (though the other two novels are excellent); a taut, perfectly paced, searing tragedy, the perfect companion to Crime and Punishment.
April 26, 2009
Of the three novellas, Midaq Alley is my favorite. This was the first modern Arabic literature I'd ever read. Wonderful descriptive tale of life in a small area of Cairo in the 1940s. Bonus points in my 'book': the fundamentalists don't like him anymore than they like Rushdie.
March 10, 2016
Three novels under one cover, written between 1947 and 1967, different styles each. My favorite: Midaq Alley.
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February 9, 2010Midaq Alley / The Thief And The Dogs / Miramar by Naguib MAHFOUZ (1989)
September 21, 2011
collection of stories throughout mahfouz's career. much prefer his book-length works.
November 14, 2012
Enthralling.
July 31, 2013
Absolutely extremely well written
April 3, 2014
Superb writing from a master. Beautifully complex and nuanced characters.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews