Why a Booktrail?
1940s, present day: Cairo enchants two women in the same family for very different reasons..
Iris and Ruby
What you need to know before your trail
82-year-old Iris Black lives a quiet and relatively contented life in Cairo. She has a life of stories that she hasn’t told anyone – particularly of the timeduring the 2WW, when Cairo was a very different city to that which it is now. When it was a glittering and cosmopolitan city and when it was the place where she met the enigmatic Captain Xan Molyneux – whom she lost to the ravages of war.
One day her granddaughter Ruby comes to stay. She’s ran away from her own mother and is seeking refuge with the grandmother she hasn’t seen for years.
Iris’s past and Ruby’s future are about to come together in ways they could not have imagined
Travel Guide
Cairo ww2
Cairo has changed since Iris remembers it from her heyday but she remembers it as she sits and the pictures form in her head. She has revisited of so many times and thinks it seems more real than her 82 year realit. Shsy
She remembers when she was “drunk on the glamour of Cairo”
“This war was just another layer of history in the making, contributing its dust and debris to lie on top of thousands of years of ruins. There is more history buried along this fertile strip of Nile Valley than there is anywhere else in the world.”
Modern day Cairo
Iris’ story of war and lost love during WWII illustrates a very different kind of Cairo to the one Ruby encounters. Modern Day Cairo is a mass of noise and chaos, of a frantic, bustling city
with the thrum of traffic, the bustling of the crowds and the rich scents and spices of the market. Mamdooh points out sites in the city and as they walk to their destination, he starts to tell her a little about the history of the city, the story of its streets and the heart and soul of its inhabitants who have lived and breathed this city and its history for many years. To see the city through these two sets of eyes is to showcase a city across the generations and across the hearts of three women of one family.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: Iris and Ruby
Author/ Guide: Rosie Thomas Destination: Cairo Departure Time: ww2, present day
Facebook: /RosieThomasAuthor/ Web: rosiethomasauthor.com
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