The Sun at Midday: Tales of a Mediterranean Family - Softcover

Alhadeff, Gini

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1400034604 ISBN 13: 9781400034604

Publisher: Anchor Books, 2004

Synopsis

For Gini Alhadeff, there was rarely a difference between feeling at home and feeling foreign. Born to an Italian family in Alexandria, Egypt, she lived in places as far-flung as Cairo, Khartoum, Florence, and Tokyo; raised Catholic, she did not learn of her Sephardic Jewish roots until she was living in New York in her twenties. In The Sun at Midday, Alhadeff traces her unusual ancestral history, seeking the source of her chameleon-like skills of adaptation. Through the reminiscences of family members—among them cousin Pierre, a worldly priest and celebrity confessor who recalls the sumptuous lives of Alexandrian ex-pats, and her uncle Nissim, now a gynecologist in Queens, who survived the horrors of the Holocaust—she unearths a wealth of rich and strange stories. Woven together with exhilarating prose, they form an uncommonly affecting memoir of a family whose past defies summation, and of Alhadeff’s own life both in it and apart from it.

About this title

About the Author:

Gini Alhadeff grew up in Egypt, the Sudan, Italy, and Japan. She studied fine art and photography at Harrow in England and at Pratt Institute in New York. She has worked as a translator, founded two literary reviews, Normal and XXIst Century, and is a contributing editor for Travel + Leisure. Alhadeff is the author of a novel, Diary of a Djinn. She lives in New York City.

From the Inside Flap:

iant flair for narrative and language, Alhadeff spins a tale--both wildly humorous and deeply affecting--of her beguilingly uncommon family. 272 pp. 12,500 print.

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1400034604
• ISBN 13: 9781400034604
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 226