Nazli, Queen in Exile

Author's name: Rawya Rashid

A strange coincidence led media personality Rawya Rashed to stop in front of a small mansion in Beverly Hills, USA, before discovering that it was Queen Nazli's villa.

Attracted by the dramatic life of the villa's owner, who experienced moments of glory and bitterness of downfall, Rawya Rashed decides to embark on an arduous journey through files and records to piece together the details of Queen Nazli's life, from Cairo to Istanbul, from France to the United States, from Iran to Switzerland.

Queen Nazli lived for eighty-four years, spending more than forty of them as a sultana, queen, and mother of a king. She spent the other forty years as a single woman in exile, a life she chose of her own free will when she decided to live between Europe and America with her daughter, Princess Fathiya.

In this book, the author answers many puzzling questions: Why did Queen Nazli leave Egypt? Why did she defy her son, King Farouk, and marry her daughter, Fathiya, to a man of lower status than her and of a different faith? What happened to her over the course of thirty years, and how did her life collapse to the point of declaring bankruptcy? What drove Riad Ghali to kill her daughter, Fathiya, and then shoot himself? And how did years of power and prestige turn into years of humiliation and pain, until she ultimately lost everything: her children, her wealth, and her name?