Yitzhak Gormezano Goren
“Helps show why postwar Alexandria inspires nostalgia and avidity in seemingly everyone who knew it … The result is what summer reading should be: fast, carefree, visceral, and incipiently lubricious.”—
“Luminous … One of the great triumphs of is the richness of the evocation of this city and the multiple cultures pressed within it … A sultry eroticism pervades.”—
"Alexandria, a lush paradise by the sea, comes to antic, full-bodied life… Gormezano Goren’s characters are vividly depicted as they grow up or grow older in a city of conflicting loyalties, riven by resentment, ready to revolt. Readers will be transported." —
"This novel recalls one gloriously golden summer in a cosmopolitan city on the verge of upheaval… Fluidly written and soberly enticing." —
"A gifted writer… Gormezano Goren defines the city and its ambiance in lush, sensuous terms… He also describes so well the Diaspora Jew’s knack for downplaying the danger of gathering storms of hatred, a tendency not limited to Alexandria or to any particular era of exile." —
"A powerful novel of tensions — sexual, familial, religious, and political — and an affecting but unsparing portrait of the petit bourgeois world of Egyptian Jews standing obliviously on the edge of a precipice. Alexandria-sensual and enchanting-shimmers in these pages." — Dalia Sofer, author of
"A fine work of art. . riveting from the first page to the last." —
"A reason to rejoice. . You can't help but keep on smiling with great pleasure." —
"A profound literary experience." —