The Alexandria Semaphore (Harvill Panther S.)

From the calm of Alexandria in 1885, a successful journalist looks back on a dangerous and romantic period in history - Egypt's and his own. Maxime Touta, the protege of the flamboyant correspondent of the Semaphore d'Alexandrie, is the perfect eye through which to observe an Egypt poised on the brink of change. The Suez Canal - the feat of engineering that will transform her fortunes - is nearing completion, and Ottoman Egypt is torn between the French and the British. For Maxime, pursuing his dream of becoming a journalist, the political machinations of the day are woven in with the exuberant nature of life in the Touta clan - and his own passion for Nada, once a Syrian orphan under the protection of his father, now the beautiful wife of another man.