"Very funny and at times oddly poignant, and captures something of the cynicism and despair that arises when you feel that you live in a place that everyone is trying to leave."
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The Calvert Journal
“It is one of the novel’s pleasures that its story takes place against pivotal moments of the half-mythic history of northern Africa and the Middle East … Another reliable source of delight is Majdalani’s writing, constantly alive and entrancing in Edward Gauvin’s translation.”
World Literature Today