Books Set in Africa and North America: Egypt and Boston, Massachusetts

The Book of Two Ways, by Jodi Picoult (2020)

In ancient Egyptian mythology, the Book of Two Ways describes the roads through the afterlife.  One route is through water and the other by land.  The roads are separated by a lake of fire, but both routes have the same destination.

In this novel, the author uses this theme as a way to describe Dawn’s life.  Dawn had been an up-and-coming graduate student in Egyptology, when she learned her mother was in hospice and would soon die.  Dawn left her studies to be with her dying mother.  After her mother died, Dawn suddenly found herself responsible for raising her young brother.  At the hospice facility, she met Brian, whose grandmother was dying.  They took comfort in each other, had a child and then married.

Brian represented security.  He was a respected theoretical physicist at Harvard who studies, in its own way, a theoretical path of two ways.  After giving up her studies in Egyptology, she becomes a death doula – she assists people at the ends of their lives.

For 15 years, Dawn has had a wonderful life.  Her relationship with her teenaged daughter becomes rife with teenage angst.  Her marriage reaches a stalemate.  Dawn finds that she can’t forget Wyatt, the pedigreed fellow graduate student, with whom she initially had a love-hate relationship, back before she gave up on her studies in Egypt.

The novel takes the path of two ways.  In one path, Dawn travels to Egypt to find Wyatt.  In the other path, she stays with Brian as their relationship frays.  The novel also goes back and forth in time, from the present to events that occurred in Dawn’s student days.

The author seemed to try too many story lines.  Dawn’s parents never married.  As presented in the story line, the reader thinks there must be a reason for this that will be later explained.  Kieran’s brother is gay, but this is irrelevant to the story line.

Ultimately, none of the characters were very likable.  I read this book while trapped on a plane for several hours.  Otherwise, I might not have finished reading it.

Read:  March 19, 2021

2 Stars

Books Set in Africa and Europe; Egypt and France

Zarafa: A Giraffe’s True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris, by Michael Allin (1998)

This is the delightful story of how, in 1826, a baby giraffe was captured in the Sudan and transported to Paris as a gift from Muhammad Ali, Ottoman viceroy to Egypt, to Charles X, King of France.  In the process, the reader is treated to a brief glimpse of the world as exploration in Egypt was opening up, compliments of Napoleon.

Napoleon exposed Egypt to Europe.  For centuries, the artifacts of ancient Egypt had been buried to the world.  After Napoleon’s army landed in Egypt, Europeans began looting its tombs for profit.  Europe was intrigued.  Muhammad Ali, a brutal ruler to his own people, wanted to forge a link to Europe, so arranged to have a baby giraffe captured and transported to France as a gift to the post-Revolution King of France.

Allin explained how it was possible to trap the young giraffe, probably no more that 2 months old at its capture, and have it sent down the Nile River, across the Mediterranean, and finally the long walk from Marseille to Paris.  The young giraffe had not yet been weaned, it could be separated from its mother, while it was still tame.  Because it hadn’t been weaned, several cows travelled with it to provide it with 25 gallons of milk per day.  Details of the trip from its initial capture until it reached Cairo are sketchy, however, detailed records existed on the trip from Cairo to Paris.  Two and a half years after its capture, it entered Paris, where it lived for the next 19 years.

Modern Europeans had never seen such an exotic animal before, so during its trek through France, hordes of people flocked to see the creature.  The reader learns that the ancient Romans had imported exotic animals for gladiator fights, but that had long been forgotten.

This is a fun book that describes not only a bit about the lives of giraffes, but also a slice of political life in France at the beginning of the 1800s.

Read:  May 23, 2020

4 Stars

Books Set in Africa: Cairo, Egypt

The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, by Michael David Lukas (2018)

The Last Watchman of Old Cairo takes place over a millennium, from 1000 years ago when Ali became the night watchman of the Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, to the late 1890s, when Solomon Schechter and the Smith twins, Agnes and Margaret, “discovered” and saved the documents stored in the synagogue’s geniza, to present day Joseph al-Raqb, who traveled to Cairo, Egypt to learn about his father.  The synagogue is said to house the legendary Ezra Torah Scroll, which was written centuries before the birth of Christ.

In alternating chapters, we learn Cairo during three periods of history.  Ali’s story takes place around the year 1000.  He was a young Muslim orphan who was hired by the synagogue council to be its night watchman.  As he learned his job, he also became fascinated by Jewish traditions, while maintaining his own religious beliefs.  In the late 1890s, Solomon Schechter (1847 ~ 1915) was in Cairo to search for the Ezra Torah Scroll.  With him were the middle-aged widowed twins Agnes Smith Lewis (1843 ~ 1926) and Margaret Smith Gibson (1843 ~ 1920), who were real people (although probably did not join Schechter on this quest).  The sisters were known for having discovered the Syraic Sinaiticus and were Biblical scholars in the Presbyterian Church.  In present day, Joseph al-Raqb, is a young American graduate student, raised by his Jewish mother, but whose father is Muslim.  A few months after his father’s death, Joseph received a mysterious package from his father.  This led him back to Cairo to find out why the object was sent to him.

In alternating chapters, the focus is on one of the above periods of history.  In Jewish tradition, texts with G~d’s name are sacred.  When such texts become worn or unusable, they must be treated with respect and not just thrown out.  Traditionally such texts are either buried or stored in a geniza.  The geniza in the Ibn Ezra Synagogue is a small room in the attic.

When portions of sacred texts are found being sold on the black market, Solomon Schechter traveled to Cairo to seek out the documents.  He had the documents saved and sent to Cambridge University, where they are still held.  [This is true.]

In family tradition, the eldest son of the al-Raqb family (with Ali being the original night watchman).  Joseph’s father was the eldest son, hence was the night watchman.  He held this position until after the Yom Kippur War when an event occurred in which he was unable to keep a mob from the synagogue.  Joseph became fascinated in his quest to determine the fate of the Ezra Scroll.

The novel doesn’t take a position on the religious tradition per se, but does raise issued confronted by religious scholars in studying ancient documents.

I was totally absorbed by this novel.  Michael David Lukas also wrote The Oracle of Stamboul, which is a historical novel about the last days of the Ottoman Empire.  I read this book about 7 years ago and very much enjoyed that as well.

Read:  August 8, 2018

5 Stars

Books set in Africa: Egypt

The Map of Love, by Ahdaf Soueif (1999)


3.5 Stars

Read: March 2, 2014

Books Set in the United States and Egypt

A Guide for the Perplexed, by Dara Horn (2013)

Two Stars

Read: January 10, 2014