Clouds Over Alexandria

In Clouds Over Alexandria, Ibrahim Abdelmeguid completes his trilogy about Alexandria, begun with No-one Sleeps in Alexandria and Birds of Amber. In these three novels - which can be read as a sequence or individually - he describes life in the famous city, beginning in an era of openness to the wider world and ending at a time of closure to outside influences. The events of the novel take place in the 1970s, when the cosmopolitan spirit which has characterised the city throughout history has disappeared. In place of the melting pot of ethnicities, religions and cultures comes intolerance and hatred, destroying Alexandria’s secular traditions. The city occupies a large portion of the imaginary space of the novel, in which the characters play out their parts to reveal the social and religious crisis of a city now bereft of its free spirit.