The place in Ibrahim Abdel Meguid’s novel No One Sleeps in Alexandria: a descriptive analytic study

The place is one of the most important elements of narrative structure, whether it is real or imaginary. Ibrahim Abdel Meguid chooses Alexandria to be the place of his novel No One Sleeps in Alexandria. The city of Alexandria is presented in a coherent structure that incorporates the real and the fictional elements, in addition to the historical and the mythical ones.
This research aims at exploring the historical, geographical, cultural, and traditional dimensions of the placethrough a descriptive methodology that is based on the great writings about narration. The research also reveals the relation between the setting (time and place) and the characters in which they live and interact.
Moreover, the research, in addition to Alexandria, tackles two other places in the novel: the village and the desert. Thus, not only does Abel Meguid talk about Alexandria during the Second World War, he also discusses two different environments. In fact, the three environments stand for all the Egyptian regions.
The researchconcludes that the place, in the novel, is not solid or silent; it is renewable, variable, and full of life and movement instead. Furthermore, the place in No One Sleeps in Alexandria reflects the notions of eternity and infinity. It motivates the reader to believe that the places (as hypothetical characters) are equally alive as the real characters in the narrative work.
The destiny of the place is strongly related to the destiny of the characters. This idea is reflected in Abdel Meguid’s novel, for the destiny of Alexandria is related to the destiny of the main character of the novel