In this dazzling finale -- both of the Ghorba Ghost Story Series and award-winning author Massoud Hayoun's brief career as a novelist -- Darf Publishers brings you a Jewish Egyptian Wizard of Oz, radiating "crushed velour and luxury" and "sensuality, once more". Sam Saadoun, not to be confused with the gay Jewish Arab protagonist of Building 46 四十六号楼 of the same name, had planned to spend a final night in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn with the last of many lovers. But amid their frolicking through that American immigrant enclave's Post-Soviet attractions, Sam finds himself cast back to the heart of the matter: Alexandria, Egypt in the 1930s. With the biting satire and folly of a Luis Buuel film and the delicious melancholy of a Beach House ballad, Hayoun offers us a striking last look at the Ghorba Ghost World's longing, love, and lust as well as the political intimacies that have shaped the 21st Century Arab world and North African diaspora. This is a parting glance that is bound to haunt and delight.
In this dazzling finale -- both of the Ghorba Ghost Story Series and award-winning author Massoud Hayoun's brief career as a novelist -- Darf Publishers brings you a Jewish Egyptian Wizard of Oz, radiating "crushed velour and luxury" and "sensuality, once more". Sam Saadoun, not to be confused with the gay Jewish Arab protagonist of Building 46 四十六号楼 of the same name, had planned to spend a final night in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn with the last of many lovers. But amid their frolicking through that American immigrant enclave's Post-Soviet attractions, Sam finds himself cast back to the heart of the matter: Alexandria, Egypt in the 1930s. With the biting satire and folly of a Luis Buuel film and the delicious melancholy of a Beach House ballad, Hayoun offers us a striking last look at the Ghorba Ghost World's longing, love, and lust as well as the political intimacies that have shaped the 21st Century Arab world and North African diaspora. This is a parting glance that is bound to haunt and delight.
