Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Fiction review: The End of Sleep

New Yorker

The End of Sleep, by Rowan Somerville

In this madcap picaresque, we follow Fin, an Irish journalist, as he spends a day in the streets of Cairo pursuing a story of buried treasure that he believes will restore his floundering career at an English-language newspaper there. Fin seeks a “pacy linear narrative with obvious and satisfying climaxes,” but Somerville leads us, instead, down numerous back alleys and side streets, with frequent breaks for mint tea.


See the above page for the rest of this short review.


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