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| Courtesy of Cairo Scene |
Day keeps promising - or threatening - but not delivering rain. But we cooked a chicken yesterday and have plenty of reading material, so rain or no rain really doesn’t matter.
Reading aloud two works of fiction. Midaq Alley, by Nobel Prize winner (1986) Naguib Mahfouz. Set in Cairo in the early forties, it’s a stunning combination of a period urban Egyptian setting and universal characters that we have all known in various guises. We had previously read his Cairo trilogy, which was excellent. But this is better.
Our other read aloud is even older. The Diary of a Nobody. Comic novel published in 1892 after having been serialised in Punch. And never out of print since. Though happily long out of copyright and therefore downloadable for free, as it’s really quite funny. As with Midaq Alley, the period detail is interesting while the characters are timeless.
Overcast - mostly
Midaq Alley Naguib Mahfouz Nobel prize literature 1988
Diary of a Nobody pre WW Ic