Dreamers of the Day: A Novel - Hardcover

Russell, Mary Doria

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1400064716 ISBN 13: 9781400064717

Publisher: Random House, 2008

Synopsis

“I suppose 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.”

So begins the account of Agnes Shanklin, the charmingly diffident narrator of Mary Doria Russell’s compelling new novel, Dreamers of the Day. And what is Miss Shanklin’s “little story?” Nothing less than the creation of the modern Middle East at the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference, where Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Lady Gertrude Bell met to decide the fate of the Arab world–and of our own.

A forty-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, Agnes 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 Peace Conference convenes, Agnes, with her plainspoken American opinions–and a small, noisy dachshund named Rosie–enters into the company of the historic luminaries who will, in the space of a few days at a hotel in Cairo, invent the nations of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan.

Neither a pawn nor a participant at the conference, Agnes is ostensibly insignificant, and that makes her a welcome sounding board for Churchill, Lawrence, and Bell. 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 toward a personal awakening.

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. As enlightening as it is entertaining, Dreamers of the Day is a memorable, passionate, gorgeously written novel.

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1400064716
• ISBN 13: 9781400064717
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272