Soueif (shortlisted for the Booker in 1999 for The Map of Love) serves up a mostly stale collection of previously published stories, all at least a decade old, about clashing cultures and disappointed love. The best are three stories that follow Aisha from her Cairo childhood to a rough period as a teenager in 1964 London, where, as the misfit daughter of Muslim intellectuals, she encounters boorish classmates who tease her about polygamy and camels. Back in Egypt years later, Aisha confronts sorrowful memories of her doomed marriage. Two related stories, also set in England, feature Asya, a Middle Eastern woman moving on after a failed marriage and a miscarriage. Soueif incorporates wonderfully atmospheric details, particularly in the stories set in Egypt, but the stories feel thin and are too frequently overly lyrical. Though competent, these stories comprise the early works of a writer who has come into her own in later works.

In these nine vividly rendered short stories, the Cairo-born Soueif (The Map of Love, 2000) seems equally fascinated with the tenuous situations of immigrant women living in their adopted countries and with the difficulty of sustaining love in long-term relationships. In the title story, a pregnant woman develops dangerously high blood pressure and must be hospitalized; her Western dress threatens the more religious women on the ward and draws a doctor's sexual innuendo. She takes comfort from her memories of a trusted friend sick with cancer, who defied her illness by wrapping her head in a green silk turban while lying in a "theatrical" bed "worthy of Cleopatra." The women in these stories long to be stronger than the cultural forces aligned against them but find their lovers and their confidence fading away. Still, small gestures sometimes stand in for larger acts of rebellion; the restless but timid teen in "1964" finally stops attending school, where she is the object of much ridicule. The potent themes and far-flung settings make this collection rich reading.