Gustave Flaubert transformed French literature and caused an outcry when his novel Madame Bovary, portraying a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage, was published in 1857. Combining letters to his mother and friends with personal notes, this volume reconstructs Flaubert's formative journey to Egypt as a young man, beautifully portraying his sense of wonder and decadent surrender to the sensual delights of nineteenth-century Cairo.

Soirée chez la Triestine. Little street behind the Hôtel d'Orient. We are taken upstairs into a large room. The divan projects out over the street; on both sides of the divan, small windows giving on the street, which cannot be shut. Opposite the divan, a large window without frame or glass; through it we see a palm-tree. On a large divan to the left, two women sitting cross-legged; on a kind of mantel-piece, a night-light and a bottle of raki. La Triestina comes down, a small woman, blonde, red-faced. The first of the two women - thick lipped, snub-nosed, gay, brutal. 'Un poco matta, Signor,' said La Triestina; the second, large black eyes, straight nose, tired plaintive air, probably the mistress of some European in Cairo. She understands two or three words of French and knows what the Cross of the Legion of Honour is. La Triestina was violently afraid, begged us to make no noise. Abbas Pasha, who is fond only of men, makes things difficult for women; in this brothel it is forbidden to dance or play music. Nevertheless she played the darabukeh on the table with her fingers, while the other rolled her girdle, knotted it low on her hips, and danced; she did an Alexandrian dance which consists, as to arm movements, in raising the edge of each hand alternately to the forehead. Another dance: arms stretched out front, elbows a little bent, the torso motionless; the pelvis quivers.

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