The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World (P.S.) (006082218X) - Reviews and Prices
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The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World (P.S.) (006082218X) - Customer Reviews, Information, Ratings, and Prices
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World (P.S.) (006082218X) - Reviews and Prices
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:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Poignant, memorable portrait of a modern-day exodus:
Lucette Lagnado's beautiful, remarkably well documented portrait of her family and their ultimate expulsion from Egypt to the United States in the early 1960s repeats a trope of Jewish history: periods of peace for Jews somewhere in the diaspora, followed by abrupt, cruel expulsion to new lands. This book gave me an appreciation for the richness the Egyptian Jews enjoyed, not only monetarily (surely not all Jews from Egypt had the wealth that this family once had) but the richness of a shared community... more info
A Family's Long Journey:
This is a story about transition from the old, familiar world in which life seemed so comfortable and stable to a new existence across the ocean. In this case the specific cities were Cairo to New York with several complex and unsatisfying stops in Europe. The family was used to a relatively aristocratic existence in Egypt until things became quite unpleasant for Jews as Israel came into existence and then was in active conflict with Egypt. What was once an accepting and welcoming place turned into a sea of... more info
This is not just a Jewish story.:
My father was put on a train at 11 years old, alone, by his parents. He was going to be lynched that evening, for not moving out of the way fast enough, in Alabama. He, too, was never able to adjust and reconcile. He did not see his parents again for over 30 years. I am 65 years old, his youngest child. Like LuLu, I was privileged to be "turned over" to him while the rest of my family got on with their lives. I cried when LuLu dad died, because I understood her love for him. I feel the same way about my... more info
Man in the Sharkskin Suit:
One of the better books that I have read in the last couple of years. It detailed life in Cairo during the 1930s through 1960s of the Jewish people who lived in harmony with other cultures in that city. Family life is at the center of the narration with minute details of foods, entertainment, business, clothing, and marriage. Necessity demands the family leave Cairo in the 1960s as a more militant government changes their life drastically. With a stop in France for many months en route to New York, the... more info
