Book - BookDetective

Name: Gazelle

Author: Rikki Ducornet
Year: 2003
Rank:

Rating:

Original Rating:

Pop Rating:

Genres/categories:
Historical fiction, Fiction

Purchase/reserch links:

ISBNs:
9780385720434
9780375411243
0385720432
0375411240

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.