The Naqib's Daughter

by Samia Serageldin

A passionate tale, woven from personal stories of heroic betrayal and love, The Naqib s Daughter is based on historical characters, and set during Napoleon s campaign in Egypt. Lady Nafisa,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0007182171
• ISBN13: 9780007182176
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Length: 309 Pages
• Weight: 1.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Two Women's Story of Napolean's Army in Egypt

Samia Serageldin's new novel is engaging and challenging. It focuses on two women, one well advanced in years and one a young bride, both of whom hold their own as politics and military conflict swirl around them. From behind the veil and within the harem, they shape their own destiny and influence events of national importance. The action takes place in occupied Egypt in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Historical notes and a glossary make it possible to follow the convoluted power dynamics among the Ottomans, British, French, Egyptians, and the enslaved/freed/ruling class of Mamlukes. If you like to learn your history through fiction, you can learn a lot by paying close attention the issues in the background of the two women's lives. And if you're more interested in the characters, you don't have to follow the politics in great detail. The younger woman, the title character, engages in a love affair that I didn't find entirely convincing. The novel presents a view of marriage, however, that is wonderfully complex. The conflict between the polygamous Egyptian approach and the monogamous European one is complicated by rampant infidelity among the Europeans. In Samia Serageldin's hands, there's no black and white treatment of this matter; I'm still pondering its many nuances. I look forward to reading this book again.

A young girl's story, as Napoleon attempts to conquer Egypt

The Naqib's Daughter is a fascinating and absorbing historical novel, set at the time of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798. The title character is a young girl from a prominent Cairo family who was married off to Napoleon for a political alliance. Ignored by Bonaparte, she fell in love with another Frenchman, who also abandoned her when the expedition returned to France. The girl's story is one of adaptability, survival, loyalty, family and betrayal. There are many other dimensions to the book, too. It is rich in historical detail about this important but little known episode of French, Egyptian and European history, and how it related to the geopolitical rivalries of France, England, and the Ottoman Empire. It brings into focus the difficult cultural encounters of the West with the Muslim and Arab World, both then and now. Serageldin often hints at the parallels between Napoleon's expedition and the U.S. invasion of Iraq as, for example, when the girl's lover muses that "such arrogance, such ignorance on our part, the French, to think we could remake the world in our image." The Naqib's Daughter also has many intriguing parallels with Serageldin's wonderfully evocative autobiographical novel, The Cairo House, which is set at the time of Nasser's revolution in the 1950s--another wrenching and important chapter of Egypt's history.