The Girl with Braided Hair

Longlisted for the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (known as the Arabic Booker) and Egyptian author Adly’s first book to be translated into English, this work deftly ties together the stories of two women: art history professor Yasmine and Zeinab, the subject of a mysterious, unsigned painting that intrigues Yasmine. Zeinab’s story cleverly parallels Yasmine’s, as Yasmine grows increasingly obsessed with discovering the painting’s origins. Zeinab is the daughter of a powerful sheikh in collusion with Napoleon during his invasion of Egypt and subsequent occupation of Cairo. Central to her father’s duplicitous actions is his support for Napoleon’s intensifying interest in Zeinab, even as she has fallen in with Alton Germain, the painting’s creator. Zeinab’s dangerous romantic involvement with Germain and the European culture he represents complement Yasmine’s on-again, off-again romance with Sherif, an architect on his own path to a spiritual awakening after a series of mystical encounters with a dervish.