Empty Cages

Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, Empty Cages is an urgent and raw confessional of memory and family and all that is lost and won in one woman's lifetime The discovery of an old tin of chocolates, its contents long ago devoured, marks the entry into this intimate story that reaches back through a lifetime of memories in search of self and home. In celebration and suffering, triumph and disappointment, Qandils voice is unflinching, revealing both a determination to speak the truth and a poetic sensitivity that is disarming. Reflecting on a family disintegratingand with it, perhaps, a whole way of lifememories of a happy childhood melt away to reveal the fecklessness of selfish older brothers, a fathers addiction, a mothers illness, and the violence and deathboth literal and figurativeof those nearby. Recipient of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, this stunning fictional debut marks the arrival of a stunning new voice.