thieves in retirement

عن الكتاب

Ayoung Bedouin leaves his small village for Cairo, settling, in afringe neighbor- hood, in a building peopled by a tragicomic cast of characters on the margins of society. He becomes' a fly - on - the- wall, the hoarder of his neighbors' most sacred and scandalous secrets, observing the antics of would-be transvestite Sayf, drug- dealing Gamal, Shaykh Hassan the devout sinner, the sex- selling Doctoress, Ustadh Ramadan the garrulous poet, and the irrepressible vocal stylings of the matriarch Um Gamal. Yet our narrator cannot remain blameless for long, and his transgressions, too, are eventually revealed, leaving him at the mervy of the building's owner, the just and unmerciful Abu Gamal, who commands reverece and inspires loathing.