"[B]eautiful... She writes about the city and sky above it, like a woman deeply in love with the physical world. 'The sun shone in Barcelona' she tells us. 'Everything blooms in Barcelona in the springtime: the eyes of kittens, the virgins of the east, migrating birds. The sky is transparent blue.' As for her depiction of Cairo, you feel as she describes it, 'the same heat from thousands of years ago. From the first Pharaoh to the last one.' You feel the life of this novel too, of 'The Novel, ' of all the great novels."–Alan Cheuse