The End of Sleep

This novel by Rowan Somerville made me hungry for shish kebab. It follows a failed Irish journalist named Fin through a series of misadventures in Cairo. As funny as the telling is, Somerville also captures the sights, smells, and tastes of Cairo with a piquant vividness. Fin's hunt for the perfect kebab is undertaken to locate a Cairene friend in peril. The description of him masticating an aromatic cube of roasted lamb is literally mouth-watering. The book lands among the top rank of those of its type, as impressive as P.H. Newby's The Picnic at Sakkara.