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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Accurate Portrayal
My parents were actually Egyptian Jews living in Cairo and Alexandria in the 1950s and fled in the mid 50s due to Nasser's tyranny. My mother has been reading the book the past week and has goose bumps ... Read More
Rating: - Compelling but in the end disappointing
The first part of the book in Cairo, as others have mentioned before me, was intriguing for a reader like me who loves to read about people and places outside of my sphere of experience. And especially I ... Read More
Rating: - WELL WRITTEN , POOR CONCLUSION
I found the book very interesting and the story well told. Her conclusion that that the bureaucrats who wavered about bringing her father over should be pleased that he was a good credit risk is totally wrong. ... Read More
Rating: - beautifully written
What a wonderful book. In may ways it is a book that anyone who's family has immigrated from another country can identify with and enjoy. She is a wonderful writer, you will find yourself laughing out loud at ... Read More
Rating: - Outstanding
This is my favorite book of the year. It combines all of my interests - Jewish history, family struggles, impact of culture, and so much more. The author spent her early years in Egypt and the family was forced ... Read More
- Accurate Portrayal
- Compelling but in the end disappointing
- WELL WRITTEN , POOR CONCLUSION