Dreamers of the Day: A Novel - Softcover

Russell, Mary Doria

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345485556 ISBN 13: 9780345485557

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2008

Synopsis

With prose as graceful and effortless as a seductive float down the Nile, Mary Doria Russell illuminates the long, rich history of the Middle East with a story that brilliantly elucidates today’s headlines.

Agnes Shanklin, a forty-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio, has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference convenes, she is freed for the first time from her mother’s withering influence and finds herself being wooed by a handsome, mysterious German. At the same time, Agnes–with her plainspoken American opinions–is drawn into the company of Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Lady Gertrude Bell, who will, in the space of a few days, redraw the world map to create the modern Middle East. As they change history, Agnes too will find her own life transformed forever.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

I ought to warn you at the outset that my present circumstances are puzzling, even to me. Nevertheless, I am sure of this much: my little story has become your history. You won t really understand your times until you understand mine . . . Forty years old and reeling from the twin tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, charming, diffident schoolteacher Agnes Shanklin has come into a modest inheritance; enough to allow her to take the trip of a lifetime, to Egypt and the Holy Land. But her arrival at Cairo s Semiramis Hotel coincides with an event that will change history. The year is 1921 and here, for a few days, the Cairo Peace Conference will preside over nothing less than the creation of the modern Middle East. Neither a pawn nor a participant, Agnes becomes a welcome sounding board for the historic players Churchill, T. E. Lawrence and Lady Gertrude Bell among them poised to invent the nations of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan and so decide the fate of the Arab world and of our own. It also makes her unexpectedly attractive to the charismatic German spy Karl Weilbacher. As Agnes observes the tumultuous inner workings of nation-building, she is drawn more and more deeply into geopolitical intrigue and towards a personal awakening. As enlightening as it is entertaining, Mary Doria Russell s compelling, passionately felt new novel illuminates both the rich history of the Middle East and what lies behind today s headlines.

About the Author:

Mary Doria Russell is the author of The Sparrow, Children of God, and A Thread of Grace. Her novels have won nine national and international literary awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the James Tiptree Award, and the American Library Association Readers Choice Award. The Sparrow was selected as one of Entertainment Weekly’s ten best books of the year, and A Thread of Grace was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Russell lives in Cleveland, Ohio. Contact her at www.MaryDoriaRussell.info.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0345485556
• ISBN 13: 9780345485557
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288