SOURCE: “Messages from Cairo,” in Times Literary Supplement, March 13, 1992, p. 23.

In the following positive review, Irwin examines the dominant themes of Sugar Street.

Sukkariya, or Sugar Street, is situated just inside the Zuweyla Gate, built by the Fatimids to protect medieval Cairo. Sugar, almonds and dried fruit used to be sold here. In Naguib Mahfouz's novel, Sugar Street, the third in his magnificent Cairo Trilogy dealing with middle-class life in Egypt in the first half of this century, Sugar Street is also the home of sharp-tongued Khadija, her indolent husband Ibrahim Shawnat, and their two sons Abd al-Muni‘m and Ahmad. The same broad highway which begins as Sugar Street, changes its name several times as it runs towards the northernmost gate of medieval Cairo, between the great mosques and the decayed Mamluke palaces. About half way in its progress north, this highway becomes known as Bayn al-Qasrein...