Told in Cleopatra's own voice, this is a mesmerizing tale of ambition, passion, and betrayal, which begins when the twenty-year-old queen seeks out the most powerful man in the world, Julius Caesar, and does not end until she plots her own death rather than be paraded in triumph through the streets of Rome.

The Cairo Trilogy (#1-3: Palace Walk / Palace of Desire / Sugar Street) traces three generations of the family of a tyrannical patriarch, who rules his household with a strict hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence. The family's trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years spanning the two World Wars, as change comes to a society that has resisted it for centuries.

A plainspoken writer of consummate wryness, grace, and humor, the Egyptian author chronicles the lives of a polyglot Cairene upper crust, shortly after the fall of King Farouk, who are thoroughly unprepared to change their neo-feudal ways. This is the best book to date about post-Farouk Egypt.