pashazade

With its face to the sea and its back to the desert, El Iskandryia is North Africa's most urbane city. A metropolis where cultures meet and clash, where money buys you everything but safety.

On the run from a Seattle prison, Ashraf Bey finds himself main suspect in an Iskandryian murder, hated by the woman he was supposed to marry and responsible for the welfare of his nine-year-old cousin. In a world where Germany won the First World War. In a Middle East where the Ottoman empire still dominates...

pbk $12 March 2005, Bantam Spectra
pbk £6.99, April 2002,
shortlisted Arthur C Clarke Award
shortlisted BSFA Award
shortlisted John W Campbell Memorial Award (US)

'Alternately violent and touching, exotic and strangely familiar. Grimwood's El Iskandryia is a place worth visiting. The next two installments, Effendi and Fellaheen, can't appear too soon...' Washington Post