num_pages: 152
description: A spare well-crafted and compelling (Samah Selim) novel in which a man in Algiers disappears without trace and the detective in search of him finds more than he expected winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for LiteratureIn Rouiba a nondescript suburb of Algiers an unnamed man with a troubled past escapes his everyday life to find himself caring for an old man with dementia. When the man dies the carer disappears into thin air. A police detective is assigned to investigate the circumstances of the old man's demise and to track down the caretaker only to find that the unnamed man cannot be identifiedthat there is no trace of Mr. Nobody. The officer's search leads him to those whose paths once crossed Mr. Nobody's. In each of them he finds a reflection of the man he is looking for.A raw lyrical portrait of life on the margins in contemporary Algiers this haunting noir captures an underworld of police informers shady imams bootleg beer traders and grave robbers and reverberates with echoes of Algeria's violent past.
language: English
title: The Disappearance of Mr. Nobody
publisher: The American University in Cairo Press