PRIVATE PLEASURES: An Egyptian Novel

'It was Nashwa who'd put the rope round my neck, at our first encounter. She alone could bind and loose, she alone controlled the thick rope, which she could jerk on, pulling me to wherever she chose. She might pull violently, dragging me in wherever she felt like it, whenever she wanted me, or let it out a little, according to her mood.' The novel describes the three day sex, drink and drug binge of a 30-something newsreader in the back streets and crumbling apartments of his native Giza, that pullulating mass of humanity that, like an ugly sister, sits opposite Cairo on the River Nile's West Bank. Pursued by an unshakable sense of impending doom that is only partly attributable to the fear of retribution at the hands of a sadistic police officer with whose wife he is conducting a frenzied affair, the narrator observes with fascinating horror his own stumbling progress through a world of menace and wonder. It is a world inhabited by philosophical prostitutes, nightmarish butchers, serene Quran-readers, pious family members, religious con-men, autistic tissue-sellers and others. Milleresque in its treatment of sex, the novel captures the essence of the phantasmagoric world of the Egyptian mega-city, disintegrating under the pressures of its home-grown horrors, while pining for the sublime. Told with vigorous language, humour and authenticity. 224 pages, paperback.