International Prize Winner for Arabic Fiction (Booker Prize) 2008. It takes place at the end of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the British occupation of Egypt, where an Egyptian police officer is sent to the Siwa Oasis because the authorities suspect his sympathy with the revolutionary ideas of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Ahmed Orabi, so he accompanies his wife. The Irish lady, who is passionate about antiquities, searches for the tomb of Alexander the Great, immersing them in a new world of extreme richness and privacy that forces them and the people of the oasis to confront themselves in a time in which opportunism, betrayal, and the desire for love and heroism were mixed.
