Sunset Oasis By Baha' Taher From Kotobi

Sunset Oasis is an ambitiously weighty novel and its characters sometimes behave more like ciphers than real people: "I am not Sappho!" exclaims Catherine, true to her education, when Maleeka tries to embrace her. As if in sympathy, the translation, by the usually excellent Humphrey Davies, is occasionally ponderous. But it offers a welcome glimpse of a troubled period of Egypt's history largely forgotten by its British colonisers and an absorbing portrait of a would-be good man destroyed by bad times.