Shady Lewis, the devastated night

We weren't bored in Shady Lewis's first novel translated into French, On the Greenwich Meridian , a bittersweet story of an Egyptian immigrant up against Western prejudices. A Brief History of Creation and East Cairo , a title that is absolutely not brief, leaves no time to breathe. The same imagination is at work: serious, even dramatic subjects in a story as close as possible to the daily lives of the characters and derision poured into the cracks. The episodes of Creation (as in the previous novel, we are among the Copts) are intertwined with a nocturnal odyssey in the streets of Cairo, which will be set ablaze by riots. A way of confronting morality with reality. Everything is told from the point of view of the young adolescent pulled behind her by a corpulent and determined mother.

What a night… It begins with dinner at home on Street 30 in the Masakèn district in the east of the Egyptian capital with Uncle Raga'i and Aunt Helena who arrived unexpectedly. Umm Sharif cobbles together a meal. At the table, the uncle recycles an anecdote “that we listened to with the same astonishment as the first time, and whose return