As the 19th century draws to a close, the politically disgraced Mahmoud Abd El Zahir takes up his post as District Commissioner of the remote and dangerous Egyptian oasis of Siwa, knowing he has no choice. The hostile, warring natives are no surprise – but little did he expect to fall in love, his Irish wife to alienate the entire community, or a local beauty to prove a fatal ally. As the gulf between occupier and occupied, husband and wife, dreams and reality widens, tensions reach boiling point.
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Reviews
His fiction has both tenderness and melancholy. It is charged with the sadness of hopes unfulfilled and of friendships betrayed in a country in which the long shadows of myth and history fall across the lives of the poor as well as the powerful...He is the Thomas Hardy of Egypt.
SUNSET OASIS is a highly ambitious and accomplished work
SUNSET OASIS is a work of fiction in which nothing is small or petty, and everything in it - the theme, the workmanship, and even the size - is large.
A subtle cast of characters emotively bring the complexity of politics to vivid, powerful life
Fascinating...The most compelling journey is that of Mahmoud inwards, an accurate and sensitive portrayal of the honest but weak man