I really enjoyed reading this book. The style was much more original than I had been expecting (based on what, i do not know). However, it was also yet another book that reminded me how much i simply do not know about modern Egyptian history. I say that only because i felt like i was missing out on a lot of context when i read this book--how did life in Egypt in the 1980s compare to the 1990s? and how did the early 1990s compare to now (revolution aside)? The novel deals with a lot of issues that are universal to the modern Arab experience--cross-cultural perspectives and expectations on how men and woman should and do relate to one another, political belief systems and dissidence, money money money, and love (plain and simple). i thought the main characters--the narrator, her cousin (with whom she was in love but he was not in love with her until, well...), and the woman her cousin was in love with (a communist journalist)--were well-developed and evoked the tragi-comedy of the story. I will definitely be reading this again in the future, not just because i plan to continue to learn about modern Egyptian history and look forward to reading it with better context, but because it was simply enjoyable.