The Gales of Alexandria by Ehab Elgammal

Fast-paced like a thriller and culturally complex like Arundhati Roy’s Booker Prize winning The God of Small Things, Ehab Elgammal’s The Gales of Alexandria shimmers with action and compelling characters. Opening in Egypt at the turn of the 21st century, the novel follows the lives of a group of friends graduating university whose great expectations are bent, some to the point of breaking, by the 9/11 attacks and subsequent “forever wars.”

Two of the friends head to the USA for graduate school, and two remain in Egypt to start a non-profit working with the poor. The novel also tracks a parallel story of an American CIA operative, whose wife’s cousin marries one of the Egyptian graduate students. Publisher’s Weekly compared the novel to Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses and Alaa al Aswany’s Chicago. The novel’s portrait of the political, cultural, religious, and social shocks of the Aught’s “War on Terror” is remarkable, as Elgammal balances a driving plot with rich character studies and complex cultural awareness.

The plot in question concerns Nasser, son of a history professor, engineer, and fiancé of the lawyer who formed the non-profit. What they discover is, certain forces in Egypt want to protect the corrupt status quo. Nasser is imprisoned, where he becomes radicalized against his father’s liberalism as he seeks answers about the death of his mother in his childhood. Meanwhile in America, the Egyptian graduate students come under suspicion post-9/11 because, well, because they’re brown. Though they haven’t a radical thought in their heads.

Nasser finds his way to Iraq, where he is assisting attacks against American forces, until he learns the secret of his mother’s death and starts to change sides. The narrative unfolds in a series of flashbacks after his death. The CIA acquired his diary and provided it to Nasser’s father because they believe it includes a code which is essential to solve to prevent mass death, a radioactive “dirty bomb.” Pressure builds towards the satisfying conclusion and resolution.

Ehab Elgammal grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, and now lives in Ontario, Canada. He holds a Master of Business Administration from HEC Montréal and a Master of Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School. The Gales of Alexandria is his debut novel.

Publisher: Escape Editions (May 12, 2025)
Paperback: 8″ x 6″ | 358pp
ISBN: 9781069167446

Michael Bryson

Michael Bryson has been reviewing books since the 1990s in publications such as The Kitchener-Waterloo Record, Paragraph Magazine, Id Magazine, and Quill & Quire. His short story collections include Thirteen Shades of Black and White (1999) and The Lizard and Other Stories (2009). His fiction has appeared in Best Canadian Stories and other anthologies. His story Survival is available as a Kindle single. From 1999-2018, he oversaw 78 issues of fiction, poetry, reviews, author interviews, essays, and other features at The Danforth Review. He lives in Scarborough, Ontario, and blogs at Art/Life: Scribblings.