Bøger af Samia Serageldin

Samia Serageldin's heroine, the daughter of a politically prominent, land-owning Egyptian family, witnesses the changes sweeping her homeland. Looking back to the glamorous Egypt of the pashas and King Faruk, Serageldin moves forward to the police state of the colonels who seized power in 1952 and the disastrous consequences of Nasser's sequestration policies.Through well-chosen portraits and telling descriptions of the era's fashions and furnishings, Serageldin conveys detailed social and cultural information. She offers a glimpse of the beach at Agami in the 1960s and conveys the change in mood through the Sadat years. Serageldin's fictional treatment of recent Egyptian history includes key events leading to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, such as the assassination of writer Yussef Siba'yi and the harassment of theologian Nasr Abu Zayd.Serageldin's heroine goes into exile in Europe and the United States but returns to Egypt in an attempt to reconcile her past and present. Charting fresh territory for the American reader, this semi-autobiographical novel is one of the most sensitive and accessible documents of historical change in Egyptian life. The book will appeal to a general audience and will be particularly useful to students interested in the social customs of the upper class in Egypt in the Nasser and Sadat years.

A collection of stories that reveal one woman's exploration of identity, finding it in both the sweeping backdrop of Egyptian history and the quotidian exchanges with friends and family.

A beguiling, entrancing novel that tells the story of a prominent Egyptian family's struggle to survive the turmoil of post-World War II Cairo.Gigi grew up in a wonderful house in Cairo, a house that was home to a large, extended family. The men of the house were involved in politics and business, cotton and trading, and the women visited and gossiped, shopped and arranged marriages and other family matters. The house was always open to visitors, political associates, family: the traditional Egyptian hospitality mixed easily with a cosmopolitan style. It was an opulent world that seemed unchangeable.But the pashas' time was ending. Many were forced into exile, and for those who remained there was an uneasy mix of new expectations and old traditions. Gigi, a modern woman from a patrician background, faced the conflicts between a traditional marriage and the loss of a family, between exile and the need to create a new life while striving to stay in touch with her roots.Samia Serageldin's first novel is a brilliant, haunting and fascinating story of a woman, a family and a culture in transition.