cover image Antiquity Street

Antiquity Street

Sonia Rami. Farrar Straus Giroux, $20 (242pp) ISBN 978-0-374-10534-1

First novelist Rami has written an atmospheric tale of a complicated love affair. Visiting her upper-class family in Cairo after years at Harvard, the narrator finds her father, a pasha and a former diplomat, weakened by age and an accident. Caring for him is a new orderly: Alex, a charming but troubled Greek. She is immediately beguiled by his mystery, his joie de vivre and his strange, not always pleasant worldview. Crossing strict cultural and class boundaries, they proceed to have an affair, to elim dangler the drama of which is carefully modulated. As Alex continues to work as a male prostitute, the narrator's love for him borders on obsession. Their forbidden romance affords a window on a changing Egypt, where once-absolute distinctions have blurred and the aristocratic values of the narrator's parents are gradually losing their force. In a celebratory blend of words and place, Rami intensely and effectively evokes an exotic world and a fervent emotional state. An Egyptian, Rami lives in Cairo. (June)