Into Suez

1949: Egypt's struggle against its British occupiers moves towards crisis; Israel declares its statehood, driving out the Arabs; Joe Roberts, an RAF sergeant, his wife Ailsa and daughter, Nia, leave Wales for Egypt. "Into Suez" is a compelling human and political drama, set in the postwar period when Britain, the bankrupt victor of the Second World War, attempted to assert itself as an Imperial power in a world wholly altered. The novel is set in the run-up to the Suez Crisis, a template for future invasions (Iraq and Afghanistan being the most recent). In this moving story, Joe's tragedy is that of an ordinary working man of his generation: he's a lovely, humorous, emotional man in whom the common ration of racism and misogyny becomes a painful sickness. Ailsa, intelligent, curious and craving to explore the realities of the Egypt she enters, meets on the voyage out Mona, a Palestinian woman who excites in her yearning for a world beyond her horizons. When Joe's closest friend is murdered by Egyptian terrorists, their relationship spirals towards tragedy. Through it all, love remains. Looking back in old age, their daughter Nia follows in their wake to sail the Suez Canal with the aged Mona. Nia has been told her father was a war hero: now she will face a more painful truth. -- Publisher: Parthian Books
Egypt, 1949. With hindsight, a disaster waiting to happen. And even at the time there were many who saw the future. In the main, though, Empire was still the word and the British swaggered and brayed, calling the Egyptians ‘wogs’ and treating them with fearsome – or fearful – contempt. To the east, the new Israeli nation is evicting indigenous Arabs in a shocking demonstration of the age-old truth that ‘the master race turns on the stranger in its midst’. Along with so many others, young Joe and Ailsa Roberts and their precocious daughter Nia step unawares into the path of the approaching storm. More than half a century later, and a full twenty-five years after her mother’s death, Nia receives a package containing letters and journals that introduce her to a young Ailsa she barely remembers and clearly never knew. It is 2003. The British and Americans have been in Afghanistan for two years. Now they are in Iraq. Israel is busy building a wall. Shall we never learn? Davies has an extraordinary ability to evoke the tensions and conflicts that characterise our relationships, both with ourselves and with others, be they individuals or nations. Difference attracts and repels and we are quick to detest in each other the very qualities that first drew us together. Our experience of difference can expand and enhance our lives, or it might threaten and destroy them. We overstep the boundaries at our peril. With its self-proclaimed political perspectives and iconoclastic spirit, Into Suez is perhaps Stevie Davies’s finest novel so far – subtle, highly nuanced and perfectly paced as it tracks individual lives through the upheavals of history. -- Suzy Ceulan Hughes @ www.gwales.com