The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit : A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World
Author(s): Lucette Lagnado
“Poignant . . . deeply personal . . . an indelible history of the largely forgotten Jews of Egypt . . . ”
—Miami Herald
In vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado re-creates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years before Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power. With Nasser’s nationalization of Egyptian industry, her father, Leon, a boulevardier who conducted business in his white sharkskin suit, loses everything, and departs with the family for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxtaposed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind.
An inversion of the American dream set against the stunning portraits of three world cities, Lucette Lagnado’s memoir offers a grand and sweeping story of faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph.
Review(s):
“Beautifully written.... A great personalized telling of Egypt’s complicated history in the last half of the 20th century.”
“Like André Aciman...she conjures a vanished world with elegiac ardor and uncommon grace.”
“[A] crushing, brilliant book…one final kiss from the Lagnados to their beloved city.”
“This memoir of an Egyptian Jewish family’s gradual ruin is told without melodrama by its youngest survivor.”
“The resilient dignity of Lucette’s family transcends the fiercest of obstacles.”
“Lagnado gets to the heart of the modern exodus in a way only those who lived it can.”
“Captivating…illuminates its places and times, providing indelible individual portraits...An exceptional memoir.”
“Excellent new memoir… One could praise Ms. Lagnado’s book for many things.”
“Full of emotion and longing, yet never sentimental, this lyrical memoir evokes a cosmopolitan Cairo.”
“Lagnado spares nothing in the retelling…in this tender and captivating memoir.”
ISBN: 9780060822187