Alexandrian Summer
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“A powerful novel of tensions—sexual, familial, religious, and political . . . Alexandria—sensual and enchanting—shimmers in these pages” (Dalia Sofer, national-bestselling author of The Septembers of Shiraz).
Alexandrian Summer is the story of two Jewish families living their frenzied last days in the doomed cosmopolitan social whirl of Alexandria just before fleeing Egypt for Israel in 1951. The conventions of the Egyptian upper-middle class are laid bare in this dazzling novel, which exposes startling sexual hypocrisies and portrays a now vanished polyglot world of horse-racing, seaside promenades, and elegant nightclubs. Hamdi-Ali senior is an old-time patriarch with more than a dash of strong Turkish blood. His handsome elder son, a promising horse jockey, can’t afford sexual frustration, as it leads him to overeat and imperil his career, but the woman he lusts after won’t let him get beyond undoing a few buttons. Victor, the younger son, takes his pleasure with other boys. But the true heroine of the story—richly evoked in a pungent upstairs/downstairs mix—is the raucous, seductive city of Alexandria itself.
“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.” —The New Yorker
“Luminous . . . One of the great triumphs of Alexandrian Summer is the richness of the evocation of this city and the multiple cultures pressed within it . . . A sultry eroticism pervades.” —The Forward
“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.” —Publishers Weekly
“A profound literary experience.” —Ahshav
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Post-war Alexandria, a lush paradise by the sea, comes to antic, full-bodied life in Gormezano Goren s first book to be translated into English. It s the summer of 1951, and wide-eyed 10-year-old Robby welcomes the vacationing Hamdi-Alis, another Jewish family, to whom Robby s Sephardic Jewish parents sublet rooms. Robby and 11-year-old Victor Hamdi-Ali enjoy clandestine sexual play. Victor s perfect 23-year-old brother David, a hotshot horse jockey, courts Robby s older sister, who s hesitant to leave her beloved family "who gave her complete freedom" for marriage, "that constant friction with a stranger... always... the same man, morning, noon, and night." The cast of characters also includes a cohort of older Ladino women, who bring levity even as riots break out. Interrogated by anti-Zionist protestors, Robby s grandmother and a friend declare, "We re Greek, are we not...?" although "her face attested louder than a hundred witnesses to her Jewish identity." Ultimately, it s the Hamdi-Ali patriarch, Joseph once the Turkish Yusuf who embodies rising Arab-Jewish tensions. As David competes on the race track with the "unbeatable" Muslim jockey Al-Tal ooni, Joseph s doubts about his own loyalties, and his fears of Allah s punishment for his conversion to Judaism, prompt him toward increasingly desperate acts. 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 to an Alexandria full of "unending Mediterranean energy."
