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Books : The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World |
List Price: $25.95Amazon.com's Price: $18.43 You Save: $7.52 (29%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.892407471092
EAN: 9780060822125
ISBN: 0060822120
Label: Ecco
Manufacturer: Ecco
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: July 01, 2007
Publisher: Ecco
Release Date: June 26, 2007
Studio: Ecco
Sales Rank: 160647
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
In vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado re-creates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years between World War II and Gamal Abdel Nasser's rise to power. Her father, Leon, was a boulevardier who conducted business on the elegant terrace of Shepheard's Hotel, and later, in the cozy, dark bar of the Nile Hilton, dressed in his signature white sharkskin suit. But with the fall of King Farouk and Nasser's nationalization of Egyptian industry, Leon and his family lose everything. As streets are renamed, neighborhoods of their fellow Jews disbanded, and the city purged of all foreign influence, the Lagnados, too, must make their escape. With all of their belongings packed into twenty-six suitcases, their jewels and gold coins hidden in sealed tins of marmalade, Leon and his family depart for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxta-posed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind.
An inversion of the American dream set against the stunning portraits of three world cities, Lucette Lagnado's memoir offers a grand and sweeping story of faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph.
Winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and hailed by the New York Times Book Review as a "brilliant, crushing book" and the New Yorker as a memoir of ruin "told without melodrama by its youngest survivor," The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit recounts the exile of the author's Jewish Egyptian family from Cairo in 1963 and her father's heroic and tragic struggle to survive his "riches to rags" trajectory.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
I enjoyed this book but wish the author had toned her Oedipal romanticism concerning her father and his playboy lifestyle during the years when they lived in Cairo. Glamorizing his adulterous and selfish behavior during the early years of his marriage was overdone. That part of the book would have benefitted from judicious editing. There is too much repetition, especially about the rumor that he had once had an affair with a popular Egyptian entertainer.The daughter is obviously imagining a father; ... Read More
Rating:  -
I could barely put this book down. Not only are the events of the author's life interesting, but the details and descriptions are so breathtaking, emotionally real; I learned to much about a country I find fascinating, but also about a peoples who though "oriental" Jews, are of the same ethnic background of myself, a child of Ashkenazi Jews. So much of the story, though different than mine, appeals to the human side of life, my life anyway. You find yourself loving these people, knowing them, understanding ... Read More
Rating: -
A very moving real story, typical and representative of new immigrants experience. I learned a lot about the life of Jews in Egypt. Highly recommended.
Rating: -
This book is a very compelling read. It mostly told through the eyes of a child living through her families heart wrenching need to leave their home that they loved. They lived in Cairo when Jews were only tolerated there. But due to the father's smarts and savy they were able to live well and enjoy the best possible life in Cairo. You learn all about their family trials and tribulations. The family relationships and tolerance in this story are very captivating. I do not wish to spoil this story for anyone ... Read More
Rating: -
This is a well written book. It is a family history, portrayed through the eyes of a litle girl who ages as the story progresses. She worships her father--the Man in the White Sharkskin Suit--, yet is not blind to his lapses and frailties as a human being.
Every family has a history, and a cast of characters. The tragic relative; the family member who died young, the braggart, the ne'er do well, the one about whom we do not speak, the patriarch, the rich uncle, the apostate--all comprise our individual ... Read More
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