The Family House

Author: Samia Serageldin

An astonishing and perplexing novel about the struggle of a prominent Egyptian family to cope with the upheaval following World War II in Cairo. Gigi grew up in one of Garden City's magnificent palaces, home to her large family, where the men were busy with politics, trade, and cotton farming, and the women were engrossed in exchanging visits, gossiping, shopping, arranging marriages, and other family affairs. The house was always open to visitors, politicians, and family, where genuine Egyptian hospitality mingled with cosmopolitan behavior. It was a dazzling and seemingly eternal world as the era of the Pashas was nearing its end, when many were forced to leave Egypt. Those who remained faced a bitter reality. Gigi, a modern woman from a conservative background, faces the conflict between accepting a traditional marriage and losing her family, and between exile and the need to establish a new life on one hand, and preserving her roots on the other.