- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Halban Publishers; illustrated edition edition (11 Oct 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1870015878
- ISBN-13: 978-1870015875
- Product Dimensions: 13.8 x 2.8 x 21.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,060,509 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
When Ellis Douek was nine, his mother insisted that he take up embroidery, in case he became a surgeon when he grew up. Of course she was right, for he became Consultant ENT Surgeon at Guy's Hospital in London. The Douek parents had the unerring quality of belonging in whichever country they lived - Egypt, the Sudan, Columbia and, finally, England. Ellis Douek's memoirs describe the hedonism of life in Egypt, the Suez Crisis which uprooted them, 1950s Bradford, and Paris. He began his medical training in Paris where he, his sister Claudia (Claudia Roden, the cookery writer), and brother Zaki lived free of adult supervision. His training continued in London during a time of smog, digs and landladies. Ellis's days as an army medic provide hilarious accounts of whisky-sodden soldiers, circumcisions and bureaucratic procedures.
From the Publisher
Ellis Douek describes this work as strands of memory. These strands weave between remembrance of dawn across the Nile and the silence of the feloukas, summers by the sea in Alexandria and the seeming security and hedonism of it all, between Nasser and the Suez War which disrupted their lives and uprooted the family, and 1950s Bradford – an austere place after the prosperity and warmth of Egypt – where Ellis finished his schooling.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A delightful stroll down Memory Lane,
By
This review is from: A Middle Eastern Affair (Hardcover)
Ellis Douek is a true cosmopolitan who has lived in many different countries - Egypt where he was born, Colombia, England, France and Scotland. He has felt at home everywhere, and, although his Jewish family had to leave Egypt after Suez in 1956, he has never felt himself to be an exile, and in fact has rather relished his position as something of an outsider. He maintains, for example, that, in the 1950s and 1960s at least, Englishmen felt more threatened by other Englishmen from different class backgrounds than by someone with a foreign background like his. But I am sure there was in any case nothing threatening in his urbanely witty company.He marvellously evokes the atmosphere not only of all of these places in which he has lived (how agreeable, for example, life was for prosperous Cairene families in the period before the war and then again for a few years after the war), but also of different eras. For example, his description of England in the 1950s has not only the freshness of observation which he brought to the country as a foreigner, but he also reminds us that the England of that time would seem, even to Englishmen living today, like an almost foreign country. He is an excellent and amusing anecdotist. His stories include memories of his life as a medical student (he later became a distinguished surgeon) in France and in England. There is a hilarious account of the time when he was stationed in Scotland as a medical officer in the British Army. There is a loving description of his nanny, whose somewhat primitive but essentially accepting philosophy of life he has refined into his own more sophisticated one. He has in fact reflected much about life, often incorporating stray comments that have been made to him here and there into his own outlook on the world. His remarkably sunny disposition shines from every page. If there is a second edition, I hope he will include a family tree and an outline chronology, the latter necessary because the book does meander rather; but it is a delightful and entertaining read.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A life full, varied, unpredictable, beautifully recounted,
By A Customer
This review is from: A Middle Eastern Affair (Hardcover)
Ellis Douek can never have expected life would take him to the places it has, nor that he could possibly achieve what he has. An observer of the world's trials and tribulations who has made his own mark on mankind. Never a stranger, his sympathetic eye records the events of the world he has passed through. Highly recommended
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
5.0 out of 5 stars
A delightful stroll down Memory Lane,
By Ralph Blumenau - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: A Middle Eastern Affair (Hardcover)
Ellis Douek is a true cosmopolitan who has lived in many different countries - Egypt where he was born, Colombia, England, France and Scotland. He has felt at home everywhere, and, although his Jewish family had to leave Egypt after Suez in 1956, he has never felt himself to be an exile, and in fact has rather relished his position as something of an outsider. He maintains, for example, that, in the 1950s and 1960s at least, Englishmen felt more threatened by other Englishmen from different class backgrounds than by someone with a foreign background like his. But I am sure there was in any case nothing threatening in his urbanely witty company.
He marvellously evokes the atmosphere not only of all of these places in which he has lived (how agreeable, for example, life was for prosperous Cairene families in the period before the war and then again for a few years after the war), but also of different eras. For example, his description of England in the 1950s has not only the freshness of observation which he brought to the country as a foreigner, but he also reminds us that the England of that time would seem, even to Englishmen living today, like an almost foreign country. He is an excellent and amusing anecdotist. His stories include memories of his life as a medical student (he later became a distinguished surgeon) in France and in England. There is a hilarious account of the time when he was stationed in Scotland as a medical officer in the British Army. There is a loving description of his nanny, whose somewhat primitive but essentially accepting philosophy of life he has refined into his own more sophisticated one. He has in fact reflected much about life, often incorporating stray comments that have been made to him here and there into his own outlook on the world. His remarkably sunny disposition shines from every page. If there is a second edition, I hope he will include a family tree and an outline chronology, the latter necessary because the book does meander rather; but it is a delightful and entertaining read |
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