Pistachio Seller

"It was Saturday. I remember. And while he was standing on a step ladder

in the hall, changing a light bulb in the faint light coming through the window,

I decided to love him." So begins this wonderfully exuberant novel of

quixotic adolescent longing and the enduring search for self. Set in middleclass

urban Egypt, the story chronicles young Wafaa's struggle to come to

terms with her own sexuality and her romantic infatuation with her cousin

Ashraf, a spoiled and confident young Egyptian who was educated in England.

Ashraf's worldliness and carefree attitudes stand in sharp contrast to

Wafaa's provincial Islamic piousness.

As both mature they find outside events encroaching upon their sheltered

lives, forcing each to confront challenges to their youthful ideologies.

Ashraf is chastened by an economic turnaround that takes him to the

United States as an impoverished immigrant, and Wafaa begins to question

her rigid fundamentalist beliefs that seem increasingly inadequate to make

sense of the complex world around her.

Reem Bassiouney effortlessly captures the voices of her characters,

bringing them to life and allowing the reader to be fully immersed in their

lives as they unfold in moving, often funny, and eventually triumphant ways.

The Pistachio Seller introduces Bassiouney's work to an English audience for

the first time.