Picnic at Sakkara
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€18.99
The setting of The Picnic at Sakkara, a delightful comedy, is Egypt in the days of King Farouk. Edgar Perry, a lecturer at Cairo University, finds himself in a world on all sides less well-ordered than himself. His own wife deceives herself, it not him; his illustrious private pupil, Tureiya Pasha, encourages him to believe in something like a mirage; his students, in the intervals of hearing from him about the beauties of George Eliot, take part in violent political demonstrations; and one of them, Muawiya Khaslat, an attractive rogue hardly able to reconcile his devotion to Perry with his membership of the Moslem Brotherhood, almost turns the picnic into a tragedy.
Newby's Egypt is more than credible and wholly entertaining.
'The light but intelligent novel is always a rare and attractive bird. Such a novel is The Picnic at Sakkara - a book that combines gaiety and shrewdness, a sense of fun and a sense of drama, that treats an important and absorbing subject in a light-hearted and light-handed way.' Daily Mail
'His most successful novel.' Times
P. H. Newby (1918-1997) was an English novelist and broadcasting administrator. His first novel, A Journey into the Interior, was published in l946. He was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1948, and he was the first winner of the Booker (now Man Booker) Prize - his novel Something to Answer For received the inaugural award in 1969.