Thank you to NetGalley and Tim Duggan Books for this free readers edition. In exchange I am providing an honest review.

I'm so glad that I got the chance to read this title because I love getting insight into different ways of life - politically, etc - and similar ways of life - politically, etc. This title has a large political component to it and that intrigued me. While the book is not labeled as autobiographical, certainly the author's own growing up experiences are part of the story - perhaps all of it. Regardless. It was written in a very straightforward, reporting kind of manner. As if the girl is detached from the events going on around her and yet as the summers go by we can see the events going on around her have pulled her in, molded her beliefs, etc - she doesn't seem to be as aware of it as we might be. The girl feels lonely to me, she never indicates that she is but she speaks and acts as if she is.
We meet this young girl in the summer of 1984 in Egypt. We never learn her name but she is our guide through the next 28 years. We meet her again 14 years later in 1998 and then again, for a final time, in the summer of 2014. When we meet her in 1984 her father has been gone for 50+ days, although she doesn't know why he is gone and when he might return - nobody is talking about it. That summer of 1984 is a quiet one in her hot flat with her mother so quiet and sad. She attends a British school, not one from her own people, and wonders why people scoff at her. There are only two TV channels to keep her occupied when she has exhausted all other methods of distraction. And every day there are power outages for an hour or two. On her way to school each day she drives alongside of the Nile, beautiful and serene. Her cousin, Dido, is talking to her about political events - things she has heard adults talking about in low voices but she doesn't quite understand herself. Does this have something to do with why her father is no longer at home? In the summer of 1998 when we meet her again she is at University. She is majoring in film, she wants to make films and documentaries. Dido wants her to make political documentaries but she isn't so sure. Her mother is still quiet and shut up in the house. Now there are 15 TV channels to provide some distraction. On her way downtown she drives alongside the Nile - now blocked by an ugly fence and so much rubbish that she is sad. She no longer tries to find out where her father is or what happened. She puts together pieces of conversations and events and thinks she knows. She will probably never see him again. And then, it is summer of 2014. Dido and her are barely speaking, he has changed so much. Her film was never made but she's working at turning it into a book instead. The Nile is no longer safe for anything - drinking, being in, even looking at - it has become ugly with abuse. She lives downstairs from her mother in the house they all grew up in. Her mother has reentered life. She has become a minor activist and posts things on Facebook. For distraction there are too many to count TV channels that run 24/7. Power outages still happen though, every day, for an hour or two. Her father suddenly appears as if he were never gone so now there is a relationship to figure out. Some things haven't changed. But she? She has changed.

The most impressive thing I find in this novel is the way the author changes the voice of the narrator to reflect her age in the three sections from different times in her life: 1984, 1998, and 2014. In the first section, she's a young girl, and the syntax reflects convincingly how a young girl would talk. The sentences are short and simple, assertive without condition. Here's an example: "People stared at us. There were policemen everywhere. Outside, inside . . . Mama took my hand. She pulled me. We walked up the big marble staircase." She also reports what she hears without much commentary on it: "Uncle said co-ops exist because of Nasser's mistakes." In the 1998 section, as a young woman she has become a deeper, more expansive thinker, wrestling with some way to deal with her history and Egypt's: "I've taken to writing letters to people who don't exist or once existed or exist only as statues or gods." In the final section, the narrator's voice seems both nostalgic (she talks about her dead Uncle and what she would say to him) and certain: She wants to preserve the "older memories" and not let them get erased by the events in Tahrir Square in 2011 or 2013. The tension between permanence and change is prevalent throughout the novel. On the one hand, the narrator lives with her mother in the house in which her mother was born. The house contains memories of generations of her family, and is a constant and steadying space for the narrator. Outside the doors, however, the Egypt she experiences is in an almost perpetual state of change, often violently effected: Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, Morsi, Mansour, Sisi. The novel ends on the verge of the permanence ad history of the house going away.

This is a beautifully written novel, seductive and compelling. I was eager to read more not because of the plot, but because of the experience of reading and enjoying the delicious language and smart structure of the novel.

When the world is turned upside down it can bring freedom for some, but for most it is simply tumultuous. In Chronicle of a Last Summer, the main character narrates her tumble through 30 years of Egyptian unrest. Told from her perspective as a small girl, a teenager, and a student she tries to inhabit the perspective as it happens instead of telling it retrospectively.

At times, especially in the first part, it can be difficult to follow and makes the work hard to get into. The second and third parts make the work shine more. We see that aftermath of her family's fall after the 1984 elections. Her father disappears and she and her mother are left to fend for themselves.

What struck me about the perspective was the fatigue that set in later in the book. She sees the fall of her family and wants to see the change in her government. Later we see how that desire comes at a personal cost. We see her father fight, fall, and become a shell of what he was. That's one of the more heartbreaking moments of the book. The disillusionment in fighting for change. The fight needs to continue, but the cost to the revolutionaries is very high. What is lost is never regained. The key is figuring out what happens next