The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World

This poignant and breathtaking memoir from an award-winning Wall Street Journal reporter recounts the exile of her family from Egypt and her father's heroic and tragic struggle to survive his riches-to-rags trajectory. n n“Poignant . . . deeply personal . . . an indelible history of the largely forgotten Jews of Egypt . . . ”n n--Miami Heraldn nn nIn vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado re-creates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years before Gamal Abdel Nasser's rise to power. With Nasser's nationalization of Egyptian industry, her father, Leon, a boulevardier who conducted business in his white sharkskin suit, loses everything, and departs with the family for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxtaposed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind. n n An inversion of the American dream set against the stunning portraits of three world cities, Lucette Lagnado's memoir offers a grand and sweeping story of faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph. n nn