Gazelle

As mesmerizing as a tale from the lips of Sheherazade,Gazelletraces the story of Elizabeth, a thirteen-year-old American girl whose adolescent passion is awakened in theexotic climate of 1950s Cairo. While her motherwhose beauty and sexual prowess both frighten and fascinate Elizabethmoves into a hotel to pursue a string of lovers, her father, a historian, loses himself in a world of chess and toy soldiers. Elizabeth's imagination, primed by an explicit edition ofThe Arabian Nights, leads her to fantasies about her father's friend, a gentle, older man named Ramses Ragab, a perfume maker who visits their house regularly to play games of war and who opens her up to the mystery of hieroglyphics and the art of exotic scents.

Rikki Ducornet is the author of two short-story collections, five books of poetry, and seven novels, including <b>The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition </b>and <b>The Jade Cabinet</b>. She is also a painter whose work has been exhibited widely. She currently lives in Denver, Colorado.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>