November Destination: Destination:Northern Africa and the Middle East

North Africa: United Nations definition of "North Africa" includes seven countries and territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Western Sahara.


Middle East: Egypt, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar.




Algeria
Nonfiction
A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 by Alistair Horne
My Battle of Algiers: A Memoir by Ted Morgan
Camus: A Romance Elizabeth Hawes

Fiction:
The First man by Camus (not his best but most autobiographical and closely linked to his childhood in Algiers.
The Plague by Camus
The Stanger by Camus
The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra

Egypt
Nonfiction:
Cleopatra: a life by Stacy Schiff
Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt Nina Burleigh
Letters from Egypt: A Journey on the Nile, 1849-1850 by Florence Nightengale
Out of Egypt: A Memoir by André Aciman
Two Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels by Janet Soskice

Fiction:
Crocodile on the Sandback by Elizabeth Peters
Nefertiti by Michelle Moran
Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz; Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Street
The Blue Manuscript by Mahbod Seraji

Iranian
Nonfiction:
Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran by Elaine Sciolino
To See and See Again: a Life in Iran and America Tara Bahrampour

Fiction
The Blind Owl by Ṣādiq Hidāyat
Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar nafisi
Things I've Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter by Azar Nafisi

Middle East
A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
The Bethlehem Murders, The Collaborator of Bethlehem, The Fourth Assassin and The Samaritan's Secret by Matt Ree (mysteries featuring Bethlehem detective Omar Yussef
Footnotes in Gaza and Palestine by Joe Sacco
The Woman Who Fell From the Sky: An American Journalist in Yemen Jennifer Steil

Morroco
Paul Bowles books
In Morocco by Edith Wharton
Larabi's Ox: Stories of Morocco by Tony Ardizzone

The Serpent's Daughter by Suzanne Arruda (mystery)
Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud

Ethiopia
NonFiction:
In Search of King Solomon's Mines by Tahir Shah
Sheba: Through the Desert in Search of the Legendary Queen by Nicolas Clapp

Fiction:
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Horn of Africa by Philip Caputo
To Asmara by Thomas Keneally

Arabia
Arabian Sands and The Marsh Arabs by Wilfred Thesiger
Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations by Georgina Howell
Desert Queen: the Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia by Janet Wallach

Turkey
Anything by Orphan Pamuk, such as Snow.
Birds Without Wings by Louis de Berniéres

The wiki is here: http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/2016CC_GeoCAT

I am planning on reading City of Veils by Zoe Ferraris, set in Saudi Arabia and The Attack by Yasmina Khadra, set in Israel and Palestine for this Cat.

I'm planning to read The Hippopotamus Pool, next up for me in the Amelia Peabody series.

I have a few Egyptian authors on my tbr. Maybe November is the month that I finally read Palace Walk.

I have a few possibilities:

At the Drop of a Veil / Marianne Alireza (Saudi Arabia)
Intolerable: a Memoir of Extremes / Kamal Al-Solaylee (Egypt)
Child of the Morning / Pauline Gedge (Egypt)

I've been meaning to read Reading Lolita in Tehran for ages, so that's my plan :) With any luck, I'll get to more than that one, but we'll see what happens...

>1 Kristelh: Thanks for the nice introduction and suggestions!

Did you miss Yemen in the Middle East? I'm planning on reading Salmon Fishing in Yemen so I hope it makes the list of country possibilities.

>7 streamsong: I didn't include every country. I do have one up there under general heading of Middle East which is Yemen, The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: An American Journalist in Yemen.

Oh, sorry. I was going by the lists of countries above the maps and didn't see the Yemen book you posted.

I'm planning to read Lawrence and the Arabs by Robert Graves. I also hope to get to De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage (Lebanon).

I will be reading Palace of Desire - I read Palace Walk earlier this year and loved it!

And perhaps I will also read The Plague by Camus (but Camus intimidates me so maybe not).

>11 leslie.98:, The Plague by Camus is very easy to read and short. Go for it.

I've got an omnibus of the first four Elizabeth Peters books and an omnibus of the first four John the Lord Chamberlain Byzantine mysteries, either of which would fit.

I thought I could fit a mystery set in Turkey in this challenge. But it looks like Turkey isn't getting a slot in GeoCAT at all in 2016.

I've made a start on Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen which is set in Israel.

>14 jeanned:, add Turkey to this GEO. I thought Turkey was included in an earlier GEO but if not, add it to this one. Lots of great books set in Turkey.

>11 leslie.98: I've got The Plague on my November reading list too.

>16 Kristelh: Thanks!

I couldn't find it anywhere, so I'll be reading Deadly Web by Barbara Nadel, Silver Dagger winning police procedural set in Istanbul.

Thanks for the encouragement >12 Kristelh:! And >17 mathgirl40: maybe having another person reading it will help motivate me... but no promises!

I just finished Lawrence and the Arabs by Robert Graves. Not an easy read (for me), but very interesting.

I read The Stranger by Albert Camus. French, Algerian author, set in Algeria. The story is not so much about Algeria thought the sun and the brightness and water play a big part in this absurdist story of the meaninglessness of life. "Everything is true and nothing is true"--- a classic absurdist statement.

I'm going to read Dina Nayeri's A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea, which also fits the RandomCAT.

I just realized that Turkey isn't listed as part of this "destination" -- since only western Europe is left, when should I have been reading Turkey??

I ask because I saved up My Name is Red for this month's GeoCAT just to find it doesn't qualify...

>24 leslie.98:, I added Turkey up above to the list of countries November 1 so go ahead and read My Name is Red. I specifically mentioned Pamuk's books as good options for Turkey.

Thanks >25 Kristelh:!

Starting Daughter of the Gods by Stephanie Thornton, a biographical novel about Hatshepsut, Egypt's most successful female Pharaoh.

COMPLETED Daughter of the Gods by Stephanie Thornton (Egypt)

I have finished both My Name is Red (Turkey) and Palace of Desire (Egypt). Next up will be The Plague (Algeria)!

I just finished The Missing File by D.A. Mishani (Israel), a police procedural. Will continue reading Waking Lions (Israel).

Well, I finished reading Reading Lolita in Tehran--much as I looked forward to reading this book, though, I have to say that I ended up being pretty disappointed. I'm actually not sure When I ever so looked forward to a book, and then struggled to get through it. Oh well. Full review written, in any case.

The Bastard of Istanbul - outstanding!

I have completed The Attack by Yasmina Khadra and although I found the subject matter very interesting, I felt this book was too unemotional and remote.

I am reading Redeployment by Phil Klay, it is about soldier deployed to Iraq.

Starting The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay, a 1956 novel set in Turkey and the Levant.

I finished Samarcande by Amin Maalouf.

This is a wonderful book. The first part describes the life of Omar Khayyam from his arrival in Samarkand to his death, the second part is the tale of Benjamin Omar Lesage, actually named after the poet, who goes looking for the manuscript and witnesses the painful and abortive attempts of Persia to join the modern world and build a democracy – abortive because they were thwarted at every point by the Russian and British empires playing their Great Game. In many respects, we reap today what their arrogance sowed back then.

COMPLETED The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay, set mostly in 1950s Turkey and the Holy Land with a lot of reflections on travel and travel writing.

I finished The Plague by Albert Camus for this challenge.

At the Drop of a Veil / Marianne Alireza
3.5 stars

In the mid-1940s, an American woman, Marianne, married a rich Arabic man. When she moved to Saudi Arabia with him, she was thrown into a culture so far removed from what she was used to. Not only that, her husband was away often and she had to find her way with the help of his family as she also struggled to learn the language, customs, etc.

I thought this was quite interesting. Despite the difficulties, you can see how much she loved her husband’s family. A little too quickly wrapped up, I thought, though. I would have liked to know more about what happened to everyone after the book ended (it was published in 1971, so more could have been said).

I have completed City of Veils by Zoe Ferraris. Set in Saudi Arabia and part of a mystery series, these books are excellent.

Euphrat Queen proved to be a great read. It tells the story of an expedition with two steamboats on the Euphrates in 1836-1837 and proves again that real life writes the most amazing stories. You couldn't make this up.

The East India Company is looking for ways to shorten the lines of comunication with India (the Suez Canal hasn't been built yet), and Thomas Love Peacock (yes, him of Nightmare Abbey) comes up with the idea of taking two of these new-fangled steamships, disassemble them, ship them to the coast of Syria, transport them across the desert to the Euphrates, reassemble them, travel down the river and from there through the Red Sea to India. An excitable Irishman, Francis Rawdon Chesney, is named to command the expedition, and a young German couple, natural scientists, also travel along. Nothing goes according to plan, of course.

The autor draws extensively on the diaries and memoirs of the the expedition members, and especially on the travelogue Pauline Helfer wrote on behalf of her husband. She was the only woman on board and spent part of the time in men's clothes, since the fanatical Muslims of the area would have stoned her otherwise. This gives a rather impressionistic view of the whole expedition, just the highlights, so to speak. The most interesting bits come when she shows the same event from different perspectives.

However, the best part, in my mind, comes at the end when she relates what became of the various survivors: James Fitzjames ended up as captain of HMS Erebus and perished with the Franklin expedition. James Estcot took part in the charge of the Light Brigade. Lt. Lynch married a daughter of the English resident and became eventually the grandfather of Harry Kessler. Pauline returned to Germany a widow and met her hero, Alexander von Humboldt, before she married into one of the most important families in Prague. Six degrees of separation, indeed. One of the most intriguing and romantic figures in this ensemble must have been Lynch's father-in-law, Robert Taylor, who actually eloped with and married a Persian princess. I've noted down at least six books that I want to read now.

>41 MissWatson:. That sounds like it was a very interesting read.

>42 Kristelh: It was. I'm going to put Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit on top of my TBR, which is about John Franklin and his expedition.

>38 mathgirl40: I never did get to The Plague but maybe I will read it in December even though we have moved onto a new destination.

I just finished an LTER book, The Drone Eats With Me by Atef Abu Saif about civilian life during the bombings pf the Gaza strip in the 2014 Israeli war. Very interesting - I learned a lot about this small strip of land which has been at war for the most part of the last hundred years.

>43 MissWatson: That's one of very few books we read in school that I actually liked. I think I should read it again soon.

>46 Chrischi_HH: It's been on my radar for a long time, but it must be really good if school didn't spoil it for you. They were quite successful in putting me off German authors, something I'm trying to overcome now.