If you fantasize about 'doing away with' your nearest and no-longer-dearest, the stories in the collection will not realize your fantasies but they may raise a smile. Otherwise, the essays about language are thought-provoking and light-hearted. The stories were inspired by a daily feature in the Cairo-based English-language daily newspaper, The Egyptian Gazette, with which I have been associated since 2000 (AD, not BC), entitled ‘Red Handed’ that chronicled crimes and misdeeds by some of the people of this country. As for the essays, they are readable, containing no jargon. Nor are they fraught with the fear of being accused of plagiarism.
When I wrote this book, I felt as if I had exorcised one lot of demons, to make space for others.
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