The Levantines

First published in 1961, The Levantines, a scathing portrait of expatriate life in Alexandria, the miserable bourgeois society in the years leading up to World War 2. 

Orphaned, Daniela is entrusted to her grandmother, a former dancer with a controversial past. But when she dies, the girl is forced to move in with an unconventional couple that introduces her to a new political dimension. It is here that she comes of age, with Mussolini is on the rise, forcing Danila’s life to be intertwined with history. A novel that conveys the complexities of the Levantine world, from the contradictions of colonialism in dissolution, to the tragedy of the Second World War, told through the struggles of anti-fascists in the Middle East. 

You must never for any reason at all yield yourself until after marriage, sometimes it does happen that a man wants just one woman and no other. But generally, men like a change, they would change every night if they could. Men are pigs; start from there and you’ll hardly ever go wrong, you’ve got to give men trouble that’s the thing to remember and men are liars. They lie about everything you know.”