num_pages: 208
description: As mesmerizing as a tale from the lips of Sheherazade, Gazelle traces the story of Elizabeth, a thirteen-year-old American girl whose adolescent passion is awakened in the exotic climate of 1950s Cairo. While her mother–whose beauty and sexual prowess both frighten and fascinate Elizabeth–moves into a hotel to pursue a string of lovers, her father, a historian, loses himself in a world of chess and toy soldiers. Elizabeth’s imagination, primed by an explicit edition of The Arabian Nights , leads her to fantasies about her father’s friend, a gentle, older man named Ramses Ragab, a perfume maker who visits their house regularly to play games of war and who opens her up to the mystery of hieroglyphics and the art of exotic scents.
language: English
title: Gazelle
titlecomplete: Gazelle
genres: American, Classics, Literary Fiction, Womens, Novels, Coming Of Age, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Cultural, Egypt
ratings_count: 207
places: Egypt, Cairo
publisher: Anchor