Sunset Oasis - Softcover

Taher, Bahaa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340919493 ISBN 13: 9780340919491

Publisher: Sceptre, 2009

Synopsis

When Mahmoud Abd El Zahir is sent to govern the remote Egyptian oasis of Siwa in the late 1890s, he knows the danger he faces - two of his predecessors were murdered. But having been accused of disloyalty to the current regime and its British overlords, he has little choice. Rather than stay behind in Cairo, his Irish wife Catherine insists on going too, hoping to reinvigorate their relationship.

Once at Siwa, Mahmoud finds himself not only fiercely resented but caught between two warring factions, while Catherine, with her Western ways and seemingly avaricious interest in the local archaeological sites, succeeds in alienating the entire community - all except for a beautiful young woman, herself an outcast, whose attempt at friendship spells disaster.

In this fascinating novel, Bahaa Taher weaves together several voices to capture a society at war with itself and a marriage in trouble. At once a complex tale of love and an exploration of power, occupation and rebellion, SUNSET OASIS tells of people struggling to free themselves from the grip of the past. It is a striking, haunting work by one of the Arab world's most celebrated writers.

About this title

Review:

His fiction has both tenderness and melancholy. It is charged with the sadness of hopes unfulfilled and of friendships betrayed in a country in which the long shadows of myth and history fall across the lives of the poor as well as the powerful...He is the Thomas Hardy of Egypt. (Margaret Drabble, Guardian)

SUNSET OASIS is a highly ambitious and accomplished work (Nagham Osman)

SUNSET OASIS is a work of fiction in which nothing is small or petty, and everything in it - the theme, the workmanship, and even the size - is large. (Mona Anis)

A subtle cast of characters emotively bring the complexity of politics to vivid, powerful life (Zena Alkayat, Metro)

Fascinating...The most compelling journey is that of Mahmoud inwards, an accurate and sensitive portrayal of the honest but weak man (Navtej Sarna, Times Literary Supplement)

Book Description:

Winner of the inaugural International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2008

About this edition

• Publisher: Sceptre
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0340919493
• ISBN 13: 9780340919491
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320