Light and Shadows Smoke and Mirrors Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Set mostly in Egypt and Morocco, this book tells the tale of an American fascinated since childhood by the exotic culture of the Arabic world. Ostensibly about a guy in search of a fesitival of mythic proprotions, it becomes so much more. The landscape, the people, the energy of the big city and the smallest village are vividly described, and in some instances become characters in the story.
The story reads like a travel journal or a very long letter from a friend. The writing style is conversational and very descriptive; similar to Tom Robbins or John Irving. There are moments when the story drifts into another story - a cultural tale being told by an Arabic wise man.
I was completely immersed when reading this book. I understood the childhood fascination with that other world that was so much in the news but not explained, and appreciated that this story is not about the world stage, or the cultural clash between different religions. Rather, this story gives you an opportunity to view another culture at its core--the food, the children, the stories, the hospitality and the public gatherings.


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Somewhere in the vastness of the Sahara, the festival of Fez el-Kebir awaits our narrator. But how will he find it? How will he get there? Does it even really exist for that matter? Will he finally realize his boyhood dream or will he end up at the end of the line with only a camel for company?"As I roamed the streets to the east of Tahrir Square, bag slung over my right shoulder, I tried to make sense of the noise, the confusion, the overwhelmingness of that strange city. Everywhere I gazed was story upon story of balconied, British colonial-styled buildings sporting story upon story of signs in exotic Arabic scrawl. The streets radiated out like the spokes of a wheel from the many rotaries and I couldn't orient myself. (If orienting oneself in a city to which one has never been is at all possible in the first hours there.) As I bumbled along, I began to second-guess my new life as seeker of Fez el-Kebir and visions of sleeping in the filthy gutter pranced in my head. Just as I was in the process of attempting to deep-breathe myself back to some semblance of calm, I stumbled upon a sign in Arabic and English pointing the way - a crudely painted hand with three fingers curled in and the thumb locked on top of them, forefinger leading me on - to a hotel with a name familiar to me from the pages of my guidebook. (Yes, I was adventurous enough not to book a room in advance, but not adventurous enough to set off without a guidebook, hastily purchased on Rue de Rivoli before my even hastier departure from Paris.)"

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