17 Sheikh Hamza Street, Cairo is one of the most fascinating novels ever written about the Jews of Egypt in the 20th century. Avraham Bar-Av has succeeded in drawing a precise, empathetic picture of Jewish life in this unusual community… Bar-Av manages at once to describe the macro and micro lives of a typical Jewish family in Egypt… Fabulously well-written, this compelling book has the reader turning the pages for more.”
Dr. Ruth Kimhe (scholar and author of Zionism in the Pyramids’ Shadow, Am Oved 2010)
“Avraham Barav has written a historical novel centering on the Passy and Bentata families reflecting the life of the Egyptian Jewish community and the roots of the hostility of the Egyptian nation towards the State of Israel, a hostility whose offshoots are evident to this day.” Vered Lee (Ha’aretz book review, September 14, 2011)
“I enjoyed your book tremendously. I read it in a single sitting while vacationing at the Dead Sea. I simply couldn’t put it down. It’s a fascinating novel presenting an honest, fully fleshed out picture of a family, community and time, in addition to having compelling, complex characters and wonderful dialog…”
Prof. Tamar Alexander (The Chair of the Literature Department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
“Barav is a truly talented writer. To a large extent, his book is the Cairene response to An Alexandria Summer, the wonderful novel by Yitzhak Gormezano Goren about a childhood spent in Alexandria. It is comparable to other notable books about Egypt, such as The one Facing Us by Ronit Matalon and Jacqueline Kahanov’s novels.”
Yaron Avitov (book critic in the book column of Status Quo)
AvrahamBar-Av:
Our true adventure in Egypt reveals the roots of the Israeli-Arab Conflict that encompasses all Islamic nation in the middle-east. A conflict that is still alive and kicking to these days.
We lived our lives in Egypt like a grafted limb. We were never a part of the amazing entity called Egypt. We were members of a rootless elite that managed to bloom in the fissure between a rotting, corrupt regime and the dying British empire. We ignored the domestic and regional changes that spelled the end of our days in Egypt. It looks as if we had built our cozy little homes on the back of a dormant crocodile. The moment it started to show signs of waking up, the walls of our existence in Egypt began to crack. The more the national aspirations intensified, both our own and those of Egypt, the more the repelling forces became brutal and unbridgeable until the final expulsion.
Avraham Bar-Av (Albert Bentata)
Israel, 2011
