So vividly evocative that you can smell the dust and dung, jacaranda and the oleander. It offers potent glimpses of British colonial life 50 years ago: the snake-charmer in the garden; the nine-year old Penelope spying on de Gaulle at Government House... The result is a wise, colourful and touching tale
The Times
<p>Lively uses the imaginative power of a mature novelist to evoke the sounds, sights and smells of Cairo which is not so much 'another country as another century'</p>
Independent