The End of Sleep
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A riotous love letter to Arab culture—its sense of honor and friendship, its food and humor and, above all, storytelling.
In this exuberant, transformative tale of modern-day Cairo, a drunken Irish journalist named Fin seeks a story. His friend Farouk, mercurial teller of tales, has tantalized him with news of the wily Skinhead Said, who may or may not have discovered a cache of priceless antiquities. But the truth remains elusive—not until they both travel to proverbial hell and back, courtesy of a thuggish kebab-shop tycoon and his brutal retinue. Once Fin finds a way to save his friend's life, and baba ghanoush is properly made, and other necessities of life are observed, then stories may be spun and secrets reluctantly revealed.With Irish wit and passion, Rowan Somerville crafts a novel full of earthy humor, sensual pleasure, spiritual yearning, and delayed satisfaction—a Pilgrim's Progress of a modern, Western soul, seeking (and finding) itself in a foreign land.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Somerville's atmospheric if rudderless debut spans one action-packed day in the life of a hapless Irish journalist in Cairo, segmented into the five Islamic calls to prayer. Fin wakes up abysmally hungover to the news that he has lost his job for the Cairo Herald after a fight with an American embassy official. In desperation, Fin seeks out his bombastic Egyptian friend, Farouk, who enthralls Fin with a story of a villager named Skinhead Sa d, who suspected a trove of riches was hidden underneath his house, but the basement wall collapsed, destroying his dream. Farouk, then, is kidnapped by a man who believes Farouk was involved in a hit-and-run that left his daughter with a broken leg, and the novel becomes a high-energy chase-and-bribe tour of Cairo as a good-intentioned Fin attempts to rescue Farouk. Throughout, the story of Sa d's treasure tantalizes Fin and provides a segue to the book's manic conclusion. The narrative is fast-paced and colorful, and though the action can strain believability (a sequence in a hospital, for instance, is particularly tough to swallow), Somerville's madcap tour of Cairo's backstreets is worth the price of admission.
