No One Sleeps in Alexandria

About this book

This sweeping novel depicts the intertwined lives of an assortment of EgyptiansMuslims and Copts northerners and southerners men and womenas they begin to settle in Egypts great second city and explores how the Second World War starting in supposedly faraway Europe comes crashing down on them affecting their lives in fateful ways. Central to the novel is the story of a striking friendship between Sheikh Magd al-Din a devout Muslim with peasant roots in northern Egypt and Dimyan a Copt with roots in southern Egypt in their journey of survival and self-discovery. Woven around this narrative are the stories of other characters in the city in the villages or in the faraway desert closer to the fields of combat. And then there is the story of Alexandria itself as written by history as experienced by its denizens and as touched by the war. Throughout the author captures the cadences of everyday life in the Alexandria of the early 1940s and boldly explores the often delicate question of religious differences in depth and on more than one level. No One Sleeps in Alexandria adds an authentically Egyptian vision of Alexandria to the many literarybut mainly WesternAlexandrias we know already: it may be the same space in which Cavafy Forster and Durrell move but it is certainly not the same world.