From the front cover:

'To the two ladies who were to become my grandmothers one day and who met for the first time in '44 in a small marketplace in Alexandria eyeing a suspiciously old catch of red mullet, this was indeed a very small, very strange world ...'

From the back cover:

'As nostalgic for a city and a vanished age as for a childhood, this memoir exquisitely evokes life in cosmopolitan Alexandria, from the arrival of a flamboyant Jewish family at the turn of the century to its exodus three generations later. Aciman is the boy who, even as he longs for the wider world, wants not to be led forever out of Egypt'

This is a trade paperback edition from The Harvill Press, published in 1997. The book was originally published in the UK in 1996, but may have been published somewhere else in 1994. Or I may be reading that wrong. :-)

I'm planning to read this book, and pretty soon, too ... I'm going to Egypt in October and I want to release it there during my trip. :-) Here's hoping I'll get around to it soon enough to make this happen. :-)

I got this book at a flea market at Grünerløkka elementary school in Oslo on Saturday, April 26th, 2008.

Am reading this book now, started on Sunday, September 7th. Enjoying it so far. :-)

I finished this book on Friday, September 26th.

This was a really nice read, I'm glad I read it. Not just because it was Egypt-related ;-) ... it really was a good read. Well written, definitely. Also it gave a sort of ... mood ... of the time and place. If that makes sense. Not at all sure that that's the word, but I'm not sure what other word to use. Aciman describes the setting very well, very convincingly ... I did feel the place come alive around me to some extent. It was quite interesting as I was not really aware that Egypt was so cosmopolitan at that time. A pity that the growing nationalism made it so difficult, or rather, practically impossible, for people to stay there. Especially sad in this context because the author's family was so close and had so much contact with each other and then they ended up just scattered to the winds. :-( But at least they had the memories, which seem quite unique.

Maybe the main attractions of the book though are the characters. What a bunch. I enjoyed the way he described them, gently ridiculing them while also letting his love for them show through. A number of well described characters in this book.

This is in part Aciman's memoirs of his boyhood and of some parts of his later life, and in part it's a family history ... and his family clearly has a pretty checquered history. ;-) It's an interesting story, well told and with a lot of warmth and affection. Well worth reading. I hope it finds another appreciative reader in Egypt. :-)

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I will be going to Alexandria tomorrow and as this book is set mostly there it will be released there somewhere in the city, sometime during the day. Will update with picture. :-)