WINNER OF THE NAGUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATUREA BEST NEW BOOK OF 2023 (THE NEW ARAB)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 expectedIn 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 identified-that 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 trade
