8. Naguib Mahfouz: Children of the Alley

Book

Naguib Mahfouz, Children of the Alley, Anchor (1996), ISBN: 0385264739.

Program Description

Children of the Alley is nothing less than the spiritual history
of mankind, breathtaking in both conception and execution, allowing the reader to experience a retelling of the monotheistic tradition through the eyes of a master contemporary Arab
storyteller. Its premise is a telling of the history of a Cairo
alley, but it is actually an extended parable, retelling the stories
of Satan, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Moses, Jesus and
Muhammad and thence modernism’s themes of the “Death of God,” alienation and the misuse of technology.

Naguib Mahfouz, who died in 2006 at age 94, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. Publication of Children of the Alley apparently provoked an assassination attempt in 1994, which
he barely survived.

Given current efforts, internal and external, at reshaping the
Arab world, this book which brings together East and West, the ancient and the modern, and Judeo-Christian religious traditions with those of Islam, is of particular interest today.

Discussion Leader

David Schmitt is an architect who makes his home, and helps others make theirs, in Evanston, Illinois. His desire to discuss this work comes from his belief that engagement with Islam will define the western world well into this century and a better understanding of this seemingly foreign culture can only come through an exploration of works of art which define and illuminate its people.