Empty Cages A Novel - Fatma Qandil

Winner Of The Naguib Mahfouz Medal For Literature Few Writers Possess Fatmas Boldness The Arab An Urgent And Raw Confessional Of Memory And Family And All That Is Lost And Won In One Womans Lifetime The Discovery Of An Old Tin Of Chocolates, Its Contents Long Ago Devoured, Marks The Entry Into This Intimate Story That Reaches Back Through A Lifetime Of Memories In Search Of Self And Home, With The Relationship Between Mother And Daughter At Its Core. Fatma Qandil Describes, In Startling And Immersive Prose, Growing Up In A Middle-class Egyptian Family, The Youngest Child And Witness To Their Declining Fortunes. Spanning The 1960s To The Present Day, Her Happy Childhood Melts Away To Reveal The Fecklessness Of Her Selfish Older Brothers, Her Fathers Addiction, Her Mothers Illness, And The Violence And Many Deaths, Both Literal And Figurative, That She Endures.