Yasmine El Rashidi

Elegant, almost elegiac prose paradoxically reflects the disquietude of three summers of revolution in Cairo, Egypt: 1984, 1998, and 2014. This lit-fic novel reads like a memoir owing to its powerful, spare and introspective language. We meet the unnamed-protagonist as a little girl in 1984. The household still echoes with the mother's and grandmother's monarchist sentiments; while the father has disappeared under mysterious circumstances under the newly elected Mubarek's presidency. show more Six-years old and a student at a British school, she seeks to define the immediate world around her. In the second section, the first-person narrative continues as the now-film student bears witness to a cityscape around which the Nile, literally and metaphorically the life line of Cairo, is cut off and obscured. At a time when political dissension or compliance was self-defining, the young woman searches for her voice and identity. In the last section, The Spring Uprising has seen the resignation of Mubarek after a thirty-year reign.The protests have sparked a new sense of change, that of a dynamic and invigorating force. Coming to terms with the past, the now-fully realized adult looks to the future. Rich with descriptive and symbolic language while at the same time simple and straightforward in delivery, the internal rhythm carries the reader to another time and place, making one's world a little bit bigger than it was before starting this remarkable debut novel.

The book was released on June 28, and I received the ARC three weeks later, so I went ahead and purchased a hard copy of the book (from Barnes & Noble) to read and review. show less

Three glimpses into a young woman's life, in Cairo, Egypt: 1984, 1998, 2014. Three different leaders of her country: Sadat, Mubarak, and Morsi. This novella takes glimpses of a culture which seems in perpetual revolution and filters them through the experience of a 10 year old girl whose father disappears for 30 years, a young college film student who wants to capture the life quotidian with her camera rather than revolt, and a mature woman who is still finding her political voice....all one show more and the same character. The structure and plot of this piece of historical fiction are interesting. The writing is not quite as I would hope in terms of richness and emotionality. The theme of the degree to which one can committ to change was interesting. It was most heartrending to imagine the decay and increasing distance which the family experienced from within one home over time. As rivers often symbolize life, and fences, overgrown & neglected shrubbery, increasingly block the family's sense of connection with the Nile, so does their sense of cultural identity seem to flow away from them.
Very interesting novel. show less

This tiny powerhouse of a first novel has a quiet, forceful personality. Through it, El Rashidi sets the reader within Egypt's tumultuous recent history, giving a glimpse of what Cairo is like in between the news stories, and what surviving and living in the city means to its long-suffering residents. This is not a historical novel that provides a lot of context or linear plot--rather, it focuses on providing a sense of place and a sense of temporal change.

This nugget of a book may be small, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in beautiful storytelling.
Told over three summers in the life of a girl-woman in Egypt, it's hard to put down. With her family in flux, her country in flux, and herself in flux the narrator manages to navigate all occurring landscapes with a deftness.
It had a spirit of Allende but for a different country. A wonderful and enjoying read.