The View from Garden City
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Author Carolyn Baugh tells the moving story of a young American student living in the Garden City district of Cairo. Having come to study Arabic, she learns far more from the Egyptian women, young and old, she meets within the swirl and tumult of Garden City. Living, loving, and flourishing amid the fierce inflexibility of tradition, these women reveal a fascinating world of arranged marriages, secret romances, and the often turbulent bonds between four generations of Arab mothers and daughters.
Meet the women of Garden City:
Huda, who waited desperately for the man she loved until she could wait no longer
Karima, who found her husband in a collapsing post-war world
Afkar, who paid a dreadful price for her freedom
Selwa, who suffered through the deaths of her children
Yusriyya, who left her native village for a new life in the city
Samira, who loved a man who was not hers
Rich with the sights and sounds of modern Egypt, The View from Garden City lifts the veil of privacy to explore the stunning inner strength of women torn between their dreams for the future and the sacrifices women must make in a world of harsh realities.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Baugh's evocative debut, an unnamed American woman studying at the American University in Cairo bears witness to the lives of several Cairene women, finding their lives at once heartbreaking, fascinating and inspiring. The American student's Arabic professor, Afkar, who teaches her the delights of a "precise" cup of Turkish coffee, was forced into marriage with a weak, abusive man after an indiscreet crush as a girl. Huda, now perilously in her early 20s, loves penniless Sharif, but marries a financially stable man she finds physically repulsive, and learns to live with this decision. Huda's mother, Karima, a childhood victim of female genital mutilation, marries the grocer and faces a horrific birth control situation. And the American learns the stories of Selwa, who has borne 12 children and had three survive, and of Samira, who has spent most of her adult life in love with her best friend's husband. Baugh overwrites ("Qasr al-'Ayni Street seethes with faces and bodies, and I walk it in a daze that despises the density while thriving on the sudden, forced intimacy of it all"), but her observations and empathy are often spot on.
