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The writer is the daughter of descendants of two of the most prominent Jewish families in pre-1956 Egypt: her father is a Mosseri from Cairo, her mother is a Smouha from Alexandria. Hence the strength and the weakness of the book. On the one hand, the book offers the reader an outline of the history and the achievements of these prominent families and a glimpse into the conditions in which they lived. On the other hand, at least the first half of the book is an excruciatingly detailed account of the privileges that these families enjoyed: very large houses in Cairo and Alexandria, summer vacations in Switzerland, boarding schools in England, etc, etc. This is all fine and amusing, but only if the author shows any empathy towards the ordinary Egyptians that her family lived amongst. Any at all. This self-absorption and total lack of compassion is singular given the hardships that her own family exprienced in the 1950's when things went totally wrong. I would have thought that the deprivation that at least some of her relatives came to experience post-1956 would have made her understand the anti-European feelings of many Egyptians pre-1956 that eventually lead to the personal tragedies that took place. I do not condone what happened in the 1950's, and I am not saying that any of it was excusable. In fact, I firmly believe that too many innocent people, including the writer and her family, were treated very badly and suffered totally unnecessarily. I only wished to read any indication of understanding of the reasons why things went wrong and/or an acknowledgement of the fact that ordinary Egyptians were discriminated against and had the right to be resentful. Let me contrast Naggar's book with Mary Rowlatt's A Family in Egypt Mary Rowlatt was an English woman who belonged to the fifth generation of her family to make its home in Egypt and lead a privileged life there. In the 50's, she also had to leave the country (though under different conditions from Naggar's). But from Rowlatt's book, it is clear that the writer is keenly aware of the Egyptian people, deeply appreciative of their humanity and has strong feelings for their less-than-privileged living conditions. Of course, one can argue that Mary Rowlatt's family didn't have to leave Egypt under the same conditions as Jean Naggar's, so let me give another example. No one suffered in the 50's and the 60's more than the Egyptian ex-Royal Family. Prince Hassan Aziz Hassan was one of the very few ex-royals who decided not to leave Egypt in the 1950's, so he suffered even more than the rest. In his book In the House of Muhammad Ali: A Family Album, 1805-1952 he also writes in great detail about the privileged life that his family enjoyed. However, he makes it very clear by the end of the book that he understood the ordinary Egyptian people and that he greatly appreciated them. Not the military men who wreaked havoc on the country, but the ordinary Egyptians who suffered and continue to suffer to this day. I expect those of us who survived difficult circumstances, and who did so well in life that we now have the time to read books, let alone the possibility to write them, to thank our stars and to look back on our ex-homeland with sympathy and with compassion.