DOWN THE NILE: ALONE IN A FISHERMAN'S SKIFF by Rosemary Mahoney

962.0455

MAH

Mahoney fulfills her ambition to row herself down the Nile, but not without some difficulty. Mahoney is an experienced and enthusiastic rower so the difficulty is not physical but cultural. In the Islamic country of Egypt, women do not row and Mahoney must pretend to be buying a boat for her nonexistent husband in order to be taken seriously. And then there is the matter of the police.

This is a well-written picture of contemporary Egyptian society and of those who came down the Nile before Mahoney, including Gustave Flaubert and Florence Nightingale.

THE RED TENT by Anita Diamant

FIC

DIAMANT

Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob, tells the story of her father, his relationships with her mother, Leah, and his three other wives, all Leah's sisters, Dinah herself, and her many brothers. Her tale, told from the viewpoint of the women involved, is a good deal more detailed and believable than that told long after by men in the Hebrew Bible. After her marriage to an Egyptian and his betrayal at the hands of her hateful brothers and treacherous father, Dinah's story takes her and her readers to Egypt, where she comes to happiness and , in full circle, to her brother Joseph, now a man of power.

While some more conservative readers might disapprove of Dinah's version of events, since it departs in points from the Biblical story, most women familiar with the original will find Dinah's recounting closer to real life and considerably more interesting. They will quickly understand why The Red Tent became a bestseller.