The general atmosphere

"These stories - with the raw poetry of language - may be one of the sweetest elegies for a cultural historical era that extended from the seventies until the moment of the outbreak of the revolution in Egypt, and they would not have been brilliant, had it not been for that Its writer carefully conveyed sympathy, tenderness, deep love, and hidden poetry in simple, spontaneous, and concise prose. It is as if Ibrahim Daoud bid farewell to a failing Cairo before welcoming a new Cairo, bidding farewell in complete terror, looking with regret at a new, strange and unknown time.Youssef Bazzi"