Colette Rossant’s “ Apricots on the Nile begins in 1937, when at just five years old Rossant arrived in Cairo from Paris with her Egyptian Jewish father & beautiful French mother. When her father dies Colette`s flighty mother abandons the little girl to her wealthy grandparents. She soon settles into their luxuriant, food centred lifestyle
- spending afternoons in the spice filled kitchen; accompanying her grandmother to the bazaar; & feasting on the delicious Egyptian food. At fifteen Colette is brought back to Paris with her mother, never to see her grandparents again, & only to return to Egypt thirty years later. In this charming, funny, & moving memoir, accompanied by mouth-watering recipes, she evokes an Egypt lost, to her & to us, forever.