The Alexandria Semaphore
Robert Sole(Author)
The Harvill Press
Published on 6. June 2002
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-1-86046-968-8 (ISBN)
Description
From the calm of Alexandria in 1885, a successful journalist looks back on a dangerous and romantic period in history - Egypt's and his own. Maxime Touta, the protege of the flamboyant correspondent of the Semaphore d'Alexandrie, is the perfect eye through which to observe an Egypt poised on the brink of change. The Suez Canal - the feat of engineering that will transform her fortunes - is nearing completion, and Ottoman Egypt is torn between the French and the British. For Maxime, pursuing his dream of becoming a journalist, the political machinations of the day are woven in with the exuberant nature of life in the Touta clan - and his own passion for Nada, once a Syrian orphan under the protection of his father, now the beautiful wife of another man.
Reviews / Votes
"Sole allows his characters to inhabit their landscape completely... a captured moment of history" EDWARD STERN, Times Literary Supplement "Sole writes with a beguiling clarity of voice and precision of description. Though his narrator is a fictional figure, he relates his life with such realistic self-absorption and meandering detours that it reads like autobiography" ROSEMARY GORING, Sunday HeraldMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 1 mm
Width: 1 mm
Thickness: 1 mm
Weight
220 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-86046-968-8 (9781860469688)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Previous edition
Robert Sole
The Alexandria Semaphore
Book
06/2001
The Harvill Press
€33.61
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Person
ROBERT SOLE was born in Cairo in 1946 and moved to France at the age of 18. He has combined his career as an author with that of journalist, and currently works for Le Monde. Chronologically, The Alexandria Semaphore is the earliest of his three novels set in nineteenth century Egypt. The Photographer's Wife and Birds of Passage are also published by the Harvill Press.