Sunset Oasis
Author: Bahaa Taher
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Price: $32.99 (Hardcover)
Winner of the inaugural International Prize for Arab Fiction in 2008, Bahaa Taher’s Sunset Oasis weaves politics, passion and the power of a locale unknown set against a late 19th-century Egyptian landscape. Charged with betraying his British bosses, military officer Mahmoud Abd El Zahir is disciplined through relocation to distant Egyptian oasis Siwa. Joined by his Irish wife Catherine, the couple’s common ground begins to disintegrate when shunned by locals. Sunset Oasis provides a snapshot of ruin in Egypt’s past, sentiment realized in the experiences of a husband and wife divided.
