Chronicle of a Last Summer:
A Novel of Egypt, by Yasmine El Rashidi
The unnamed narrator is about eight years old in the opening chapter, set in Cairo in 1984. The daughter of a well-respected family living in a sprawling family home surrounded by relatives, she listens to the adults around her talk about the revolution, Nasser, and changes in the city. Her time is spent idyllically, and though she takes in all that she hears, she understands little. This is when her beloved father, Baba, disappears, with no one able to tell her when he’s coming back. She gets the idea he might be in Geneva.
She’s a young university student in 1998, when life in Cairo is rapidly changing as it is in her own personal life. She still wonders where Baba is but she also wonders how to participate in the political change she and her cousin and uncle discuss. Devoted to a career in film making, she sees the world through maturing eyes, watching her mother drift, her family shrink, her questions remain unanswered.
In the last summer, 2014, her Baba returns, but not to her and her mother. She and her mother now live alone in the big house, the other family members dead or gone. Bridging the gap of years and pain, she comes to understand her Baba and herself. Her mother emerges from years of solitude to be as much of a protestor as her daughter, fearless and forthright on the streets.
In the years of the novel, Egypt is a kaleidoscope of political upheaval, oppression, uncertainty, corruption, and hope. Through Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, Morsi, and Sisi, the narrator reaches adulthood and an understanding of where she stands in the family line, among those calling for revolution and those trying to patch together an honest life.
The writing is crisp, clean, but not brisk, and even though the story moves well I found myself wishing for a faster pace, and then I considered this might be intentional, a pacing meant to reflect the character’s careful interaction with a dangerous world.
