A Land Like You, Hardcover

Cairo 1925, Haret al-Yahud, the old Jewish Quarter. Esther, a beautiful young woman believed to be possessed by demons, longs to give birth after seven blissful years of marriage. Her husband, blind since childhood, does not object when, in her effort to conceive, she participates in Muslim zar rituals. Zohar, the novel's narrator, comes into the world, but because his mother's breasts are dry, he is nursed by a Muslim peasant--also believed to be possessed--who has just given birth to a girl, Masreya. Suckled at the same breasts and united by a rabbi's amulet, the milk-twins will be consumed by a passionate, earth-shaking love.

Part fantastical fable, part realistic history, A Land Like You draws on ethno-psychiatrist Tobie Nathan's deep knowledge of North African folk beliefs to create a glittering tapestry in which spirit possession and religious mysticism exist side by side with sober facts about the British occupation of Egypt and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Free Officers' Movement. Historical figures such as Gamel Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, and King Farouk mingle with Nathan's fictional characters in this riveting and revealing tale of an Egypt caught between tradition and modernity, multiculturalism and nationalism, oppression and freedom.

About author(s):Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Université-Paris VIII, Tobie Nathan is the author of a dozen novels and numerous psychoanalytic studies. A pioneering practitioner of ethno-psychiatry, in 1993 he founded the Centre George Devereux, where he worked primarily with migrants and refugees. He has served as a diplomat in Israel and Africa and is a Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres. A Land Like You was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt in 2015. Joyce Zonana is a writer and literary translator and professor emerita of English at the City University of New York.