Playing Cards In Cairo by Hugh Miles

Playing Cards In Cairo by Hugh Miles

Recently installed in Cairo as a freelance journalist and expat barfly, Hugh Miles soon meets and falls in love with Roda, a beautiful Egyptian doctor, who introduces him to Egypt's favourite pastime, the card game tarneeb, to her all-female card circle, and to a previously unseen side of life in the Middle East's greatest city. While the women cut and shuffle, Miles listens to their stories and learns about what it means to be a young Muslim woman, dating, dieting and divorcing in a country where traditional Islamic values are in the ascendant. Yosra struggles with an addiction to prescription drugs; Nadia copes with a baby and an abusive husband; neighbour Reem comes to terms with plastic surgery gone wrong; while her sister attempts to conceal her secret love-marriage from her family and to breathe life into a clothes shop run by a regime apparatchik with an Islamist vision of retail. Hugh Miles takes a fascinating sideways look at the lives of young Egyptians, and finds himself on a romantic adventure that will lead him to Islam and bind him to the Arab world for ever.

For AL JAZEERA: ** 'Western policymakers have much to learn from this stylish, highly intelligent book' DAILY TELEGRAPH ** 'Pacey, nicely written and well contexualised' INDEPENDENT ** 'A must-read for anyone interested in understanding the Arab world now - and what it might become' SCOTSMAN

Born in Saudi Arabia, Hugh Miles was educated in Libya and Eton and studied Arabic at Oxford and in the Yemen. He has written for the London Review of Books and the Sunday Times. He won The Times Young Journalist of the Year award in 2000.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780349119793
ISBN 10	0349119791
Title	Playing Cards In Cairo
Author	Hugh Miles
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Little, Brown Book Group
Year published	2008-04-03
Number of pages	288
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.