The great English novel about Egypt, which is also the great Egyptian novel about England. This is a love story, a story about growing up, a story about what its like to be a woman (Eastern and Western), a story about the history of the post-imperial Middle East during the last 30 years or so, perplexed and bloody years, and a story about home.In London in 1979, Asya reflects on events in Cairo more than a decade before. It’s May, 1967: Asya’s studying for university is interrupted by war between Israel and Egypt, a conflict that shapes Asya’s coming of age as a woman in modern Egypt. For Asya, education, love, sexuality and marriage are bound up with, and touched by, the violent conflicts between Egypt and Israel -as well as the seductions, and disappointments, of Europe.___________________’Ahdaf Soueif is one of the most extraordinary chroniclers of sexual politics now writing’ EDWARD SAID, author of Orientialism’A convincing and skilful writer’ SUNDAY TIMES’Highly unusual and richly impressive’ GUARDIAN