THE CAIRO HOUSE

The postwar history of Egypt is skillfully woven into this evocative first novel’s portrayal of a wealthy Cairo family’s susceptibility to the winds of political change. The instability that plagues its protagonist—an intelligent young woman trapped in an unhappy marriage and compelled to wander ceaselessly from one continent to another—also afflicts an eminent “Pasha” and his kindred, whose comfortable lives are destroyed by the persecutions of their powerful enemy, “clinically paranoid and increasingly irrational and dangerous” President Nasser. Serageldin’s richly observed study of a family and culture in transition and crisis succeeds both as ironical Proustian reminiscence and as a telling exploration of the ambiguities of status, loyalty, and belonging.