Man In The White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family's Exodus From Old Cairo To The New World

lucette Lagnado's Father, Leon, Is A Successful Egyptian Businessman And Boulevardier Who, Dressed In His Signature White Sharkskin Suit, Makes Deals And Trades At Shepherd's Hotel And At The Dark Bar Of The Nile Hilton. After The Fall Of King Farouk And The Rise Of The Nasser Dictatorship, Leon Loses Everything And His Family Is Forced To Flee, Abandoning A Life Once Marked By Beauty And Luxury To Plunge Into Hardship And Poverty, As They Take Flight For Any Country That Would Have Them.

a Vivid, Heartbreaking, And Powerful Inversion Of The American Dream, Lucette Lagnado's Unforgettable Memoir Is A Sweeping Story Of Family, Faith, Tradition, Tragedy, And Triumph Set Against The Stunning Backdrop Of Cairo, Paris, And New York.

winner Of The Sami Rohr Prize For Jewish Literature And Hailed By The new York Times Book Review As A Brilliant, Crushing Book And The new Yorker As A Memoir Of Ruin Told Without Melodrama By Its Youngest Survivor, The Man In The White Sharkskin Suit Recounts The Exile Of The Author's Jewish Egyptian Family From Cairo In 1963 And Her Father's Heroic And Tragic Struggle To Survive His Riches To Rags Trajectory.

the New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

in the Man In The White Sharkskin Suit Ms. Lagnado—an Investigative Reporter At the Wall Street Journal—gives Us A Deeply Affecting Portrait Of Her Family And Its Journey From Wartime Cairo To The New World. Like Andre Aciman In His Now Classic Memoir, out Of Egypt (1994), She Conjures A Vanished World With Elegiac Ardor And Uncommon Grace, And Like Mr. Aciman She Calculates The Emotional Costs Of Exile With An Unsentimental But Forgiving Eye. This Is Not Simply The Story Of A Well-to-do Family S Loss Of Its Home, Its Privileges And Its Identity. It Is A Story About How Exile Indelibly Shapes People S Views Of The World, A Story About The Mathematics Of Familial Love And The Wages Of Memory And Time.

Author : Lucette Lagnado

Publisher : Harpercollins Publishers

Published Year : 2008

Edition : Reprint

Format : Paperback - Paperback, 368 pages

Subject : Jewish - Biography

Dimensions : 7.98 (w) x 5.28 (h) x 0.86 (d)

ISBN : 006082218x

ISBN13 : 9780060822187

Overview :

Lucette Lagnado's father, Leon, is a successful Egyptian businessman and boulevardier who, dressed in his signature white sharkskin suit, makes deals and trades at Shepherd's Hotel and at the dark bar of the Nile Hilton. After the fall of King Farouk and the rise of the Nasser dictatorship, Leon loses everything and his family is forced to flee, abandoning a life once marked by beauty and luxury to plunge into hardship and poverty, as they take flight for any country that would have them.

A vivid, heartbreaking, and powerful inversion of the American dream, Lucette Lagnado's unforgettable memoir is a sweeping story of family, faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph set against the stunning backdrop of Cairo, Paris, and New York.

Winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and hailed by the New York Times Book Review as a "brilliant, crushing book" and the New Yorker as a memoir of ruin "told without melodrama by its youngest survivor," The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit recounts the exile of the author's Jewish Egyptian family from Cairo in 1963 and her father's heroic and tragic struggle to survive his "riches to rags" trajectory.

Lucette Lagnado, author of the searing memoir The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, has won the 2008 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. The prize - $100,000 - is given out by the Jewish Book Council and is the largest monetary prize in the Jewish literary world.