Where survival, sin, and laughter collide behind a nameless Cairo alley.
Cairo, 1991. A city of chaos, cheap liquor, broken dreams—and one unforgettable flat.
When a young student breaks free from his violent home, he imagines a bright new life in Cairo’s cinemas and cafés. Instead, he lands in the cramped, foul-smelling room of Um Mimi: a limping landlady with a sharp laugh, a sharper tongue, and a past full of secrets. Her son Mimi—beautiful, drunk, volatile—lurks at the center of every disaster.
What follows is a riotous, unfiltered chronicle of survival in a neighbourhood the government couldn’t be bothered to name. Between rats in the room, threats through thin walls, the rituals of poverty, and the absurdity of faith, sin, and desire, the narrator is dragged into an underworld he never imagined—and can never escape unchanged.
Belal Fadl, one of Egypt’s most fearless satirists, delivers a novel that is obscene, tender, savage, and wildly funny. A coming-of-age story soaked in grit and truth, The Completely True Tales of Um Mimi and Sharawi the Adulterer captures a Cairo only insiders know—and no reader will forget.
