Naguib Mahfouz's novel "Midaq Alley" is widely considered his finest work. It depicts one of Cairo's bustling, bustling alleyways in the 1940s. With characters ranging from Zaita, the cripple, and Kirsha, the self-indulgent café owner, and from Abbas, a barber who mistakes greed for love, to Hamida, who sells her soul to escape the alley, this book offers a vivid depiction of Egypt's largest city at the cusp of change. Nobel Prize winner Mahfouz's talent for rich and lush storytelling is more than ever on display here, in his portrayal of a small street as a microcosm of a world on the cusp of modernity.